


How to Tame a Dragon's Fire: DVD Commentary

by afterandalasia



Series: Life Built on Snow and Ashes [12]
Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), Frozen (2013), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: DVD Commentary, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-20 21:26:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 35,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6025669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"DVD Commentary"-style notes for the fic How to Tame a Dragon's Fire. For the fic that got away (with me).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashleybenlove](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ashleybenlove).



> I'm not doing this like some DVD commentaries - reposting the whole fic with comments - simply because the fic is so long (and the sequels will probably only get longer). Instead, I'll be giving a summary of each chapter, and then chattering away.
> 
> Will likely contain spoilers for the entire _How to Train Your Dragon_ animated franchise, _Frozen_ and _Frozen Fever_. May or may not reference books associated with _Frozen_. Should not have spoilers for the fic series.
> 
> The whole work will be backdated to the date the first chapter of the fic was published, so as to avoid clogging up the listings for the fandoms. I hope to get the commentary to catch up with the fic as soon as possible, but for now it's going to be running behind.

**Hiccup awakens to horns that mean a wildling attack was underway, and tries to join in the defence of the village. When Stoick refuses, and locks Hiccup in the house, Hiccup responds by climbing out of the window with a net, picking what he feels is the most likely spot for the wildling to pass through, and waiting. When he sees someone who looks out of place, he throws the net at them, but before he can go to see if he caught them Astrid sees him lurking in the bushes and flattens _him_ instead. Hiccup gets more chastised than Astrid for this, and is locked in the woodshed for the rest of the night. The next day, he goes to retrieve his net, and is surprised to find someone camping out in a ragged tent, with his net beside them. Worse, her ankle is broken. She speaks a language that Hiccup does not recognise, but it is not until she produces ice from her hands that he realises that she is the wildling from the previous night. He speaks to her to calm her down, resets her ankle, and starts pointing at things and saying words until she starts echoing them back. By nightfall, she seems to be understanding more than a scattering of what he is saying, possibly even the word _tomorrow_ when he promises to come back, and clings to the net when Hiccup tries to retrieve it.**

 

* * *

 

 

This fic originated as a cracky discussion, which resulted in "I did a thing!" and the comment "I still don't know where I'm going with this in the long run", which maybe doesn't sound like the most optimistic of starting points. But that was in May 2014, and the fic has become a series, so somehow things worked out in the end. At the time, I had seen the first movie and _Frozen (2013)_ , but hadn't even heard of the TV series, and the first sneak previews of the second film were just being released. As more canon came out - for both fandoms! - I wove it in, but the core ideas pretty much came about with just the first films in existence.

The title did not appear until I was posting the fic, and sort of panicked. I am one of those people for whom titles are not easy, so in the end I decided to just give in and go for the _How to_ _..._ format, at least for the major fics.

The opening sequence (of Hiccup waking up, being locked up, and escaping out the window anyway) is based on the opening of the first HTTYD film, natch. The term _wildling_ went straight into the fic; it comes from _Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire_ ; I was in the middle of watching season four at the time, and it was probably about the time that I binge-read the entire book series back-to-back. It took me a lot longer to come up with the idea of using different patterns of horn sounds, though - that only came in at least a year later when I went to read the books for the second time, and could have slapped myself on the forehead. So the horn used at the Wall in Martin's works also inspired the horn here.

Trollwort is a made-up plant, natch. I was reading some of Andersen's stuff about this time, and came across the fact that _trolddom_ is Danish for magic, with the Norwegian cognate _trolldom_. It was too good an opportunity to miss. So trollwort here sort of means magic-plant.

Now, it probably seems a bit unfair for Hiccup to be the one who gets most of the chewing-out when really, both he and Astrid were having the argument, but unfortunately Hiccup is the one with a history of incidents. Astrid, on the other hand, had probably been left in some sort of defensive position, and if anything is showing initiative by going after the furtively rustling bushes. And the woodshed is, in Stoick's defence, the one lockable part of the house that Hiccup can't wrangle his way out of.

 

 

Gobber's appearance here was largely because he's always popping up in the film and the early parts of the TV show which I was starting to track down, but was also part of my burgeoning, hardcore shipping of Gobber/Stoick. When I wrote the first chapter, it was still mostly a joke about how Gobber always seemed to be around in the series, before I said what the hell and just had Gobber/Stoick in the background and moved Gobber into the Haddock house. But for fear of this turning into a Stobber shipping manifesto, I will move swiftly on!

 

 

One of the adventages of fic over animation is that I don't have to worry about costs, and I can have it raining pretty much the whole damn time. The problem, after a while, becomes how to describe that without just saying "it was bloody raining again" a dozen times. Firethorn is, by the way, another made-up plant.

The existence of the sinkhole here is vaguely implied by Hiccup's comment earlier in the chapter about Berk being on limestone. The stream and pool have led to collapses of the ceiling, but the overall result of limestone caves can still be rather dark and damp (I've been in a few over the years); this one has ended up sort of oubliette-shaped. The overall description of the sinkhole was basically supposed to be a less-nice cove - a lowered area with running water. Subtlety is unfortunately not my strong point.

The appearance of Elsa brings in the new worldbuilding, essentially, that goes on top of the film. So there was a lot to put in quickly. I must have rewritten the paragraph about what wildlings are a good half-dozen times, I swear.

 

> _Nobody was quite sure who – or what – the wildlings were. They were pretty sure that they were human, although even that was a matter of some debate after a few drinks or when everyone had been sheltering together in the Great Hall for a week or so. Some of them had magic, the only users thereof that Berk had ever met with, and nobody knew why: dark deals, interactions with non-human creatures, even being non-human creatures themselves. Berk was not the only place to have to deal with them, but Arendelle denied any knowledge of them, and were more than a little smug about the great crevasse that cut off the southernmost quarter of the island from the rest of it. Arendelle controlled the only bridge, not that it was much used, and to hear them tell it was enough to keep out any wildlings._
> 
>  

Some early versions had either Vikings not believing that wildlings were human, or going too far the other direction and saying that they just thought they were as bad as if they weren't human. Early on, I also didn't really have a good grasp on how many or few magic-users there were, which just led to more revisions. In short, that damn paragraph was the bane of my existence for about a week.

When Hiccup holds up his hands "as if someone were trying to use him as a knife throwing target again", it's a reference to the TV series episode _Twinsanity_ , starring Dagur the Deranged. Hiccup complains about Dagur coming to visit, because Dagur has formerly used him as a knife-throwing target (among other incidents).

Hiccup responding to this really wasn't hard for me, somehow, because of how we see him respond to Toothless. And that's a _dragon_ , something that gets deep into a very primitive part of the brains of people nowadays, never mind someone who has actually grown up among them. Whereas Elsa just looks... human (and scared, and hurt). It's probably something between my love of whump and wanting to give Hiccup the most possible reason to see Elsa as _human_ that I went with this injury. Elsa when she's attacking the guards in her Ice Palace looks very different from Elsa in the prison cell, or kneeling on the ice when Hans tells her that Anna is dead. So that vulnerability, which gives her a sense of humanity, is probably what I'm going for, though here it is more on a physical level than an emotional one.

Elsa's trusting Hiccup... that was the harder one. But getting deeply into why would probably be spoilery at this stage. Suffice to say, she's come down a very different path, and has plenty of reasons to be wary of anyone. So while we don't see Elsa's POV here, I guess it is worth saying that she's taking a really big leap of faith as well.

I've gathered bits and pieces of languages over the years; my strongest is Spanish, then French, down to a few sentences of German and just stray words in Danish and Welsh. I've been in the situation of pointing and saying words with a hopeful expression, and while it is entertaining for the first few words, it can be both difficult and draining before too long. Learning a language from scratch, rather than from someone who knows both languages, is a bit more like cracking a code than anything else, so Elsa and Hiccup just sort of pointing and saying words comes a little bit from experience and largely from frustration.

To help them along a little, I guess, I made Elsa a very quick study Northur, the Viking language (loosely based on Old Norse), and I partially put this down to her having a very good memory. The idea of Elsa having an eidetic or at least exceptionally good memory is something that I've seen in several places, although as far as I can tell there's not really anything for or against it in canon. (The one which really sold it to me, though, was the [Tempest Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/73354) by kaiserklee, a fic which I cannot recommend enough, and which I feel I should nod to at this point for being one of the first long Frozen fics I read and the one which set the tone for me Frozen reading.) It's also in part due to her not having much else to really work her mind right now - she knows how to survive, that's not a challenge, and she's smart enough that there is that capacity in her.

And then, of course, it isn't until Hiccup goes to leave that he realises he's being more than a little bit impulsive here. I love Hiccup dearly, but there are some times when he seems to overthink things, and some times when he just seems to _do_ them without actually thinking about it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hiccup acts nonchalant to avoid suspicion, and uses his access to the forge to make a metal and leather 'cast' for Elsa's ankle. When he returns to her the next day, he takes food with him, and tries deliberately to find out where she is from when they speak. He hurries back to the forge for midday to help Gobber, who reveals to him that the new Gronckle has thrown up a strange, shiny, lightweight metal. On the third day, he takes Elsa soap as well as food, and manages some basic communication about where she comes from and her magic.**

 

* * *

 

 

Oddly enough, I jokingly wrote in about Gobber doing the cooking before HTTYD2 came out and he volunteered to do just that for Stoick and Valka. Although I've never eaten sheep's eyeballs, I have eaten fish eyeballs (a combination of being an impoverished students and my housemates and I tending to dare each other to do things) and they aren't really terrible, just strangely-textured.

The use of 'to chief' as a verb, and 'chiefing' as a noun, is an adorable quirk of the television series that I was, by this time, beginning to watch. I take neither credit nor blame for that one!

One of the things in which I quickly became engrossed was the focus on Hiccup as blacksmith's apprentice, something at which he seems to actually be quite successful even if he doesn't realise (or possibly doesn't appreciate) it. I don't know if it's even been spoken about why Hiccup was made blacksmith's apprentice in the movie, but I suspect it had to do with giving him the capacity to fix Toothless's tail - and I really love how that has been developed in the TV series, and indicated in the second film with things like his leg and the sword Inferno. By that point, he might be called more of an inventor than 'just' a smith, but I chose to take the smithing angle and run with it, from giving him more alibis to building on what he can make.

Hiccup tells Gobber that he's going to make nails, which really are a staple of blacksmithing and of which, to be frank, you can never have too many. It's pretty unlikely that Gobber even keeps track of how many he has stored up, especially if Berk is constantly rebuilding - a skilled smith can make multiple simple nails in a minute. What he actually makes is more complicated, but relies on much the same techniques - it's just that making longer rods and bars of iron is harder. It's loosely based on modern fibreglass or plastic casts, but scaled back to metal and leather; the description he gives of how Gothi would make a splint is the best that I can find for Viking-era medicine.

 

 

This time around, HIccup is able to make more of an expedition of the day, and rather than just grappling with a thorny plant he brings gloves and a bag. (Another way in which fic has an advantage over animation: clothing changes are far easier.) What he does not quite take into account is how few words of Northur Elsa actually knows, or that he's only just bought down the splint and did basically leave her with a broken ankle overnight. While this isn't his fault, it isn't exactly ideal, and in all honesty Elsa's sense of having to do things alone probably got the better of her - she wasn't convinced that Hiccup was coming back at all, and that as much as his babbling is what leaves her looking at him in _"faint bewilderment"_.

Language barriers, and cultural barriers, can be pretty difficult to overcome, which is a large part of why I came back to using food. There's a reason that it works with animals - it's direct, doesn't need words, and it's a practical thing. Hiccup understands this on an instinctive level, I think, seeing how he brings Toothless a fish the second time that he goes looking for him, but as he comes from a small village which to judge by Stoick's words in the film ("Winter is coming, and I've got a village to feed.") has had trouble finding enough food for everyone before. Pre-industrial subsistence farming could be stretched enough without the added impact of dragons stealing your livestock and fish, and potentially burning your stores! So for all Hiccup's flippancy, he's almost certainly experienced hunger in his life, and when he talks about Elsa being hungry he's not talking about missing a meal or few but the long ground-in hunger that most usually came with failed crops.

Considering he's doing this _after_ seeing her ice magic, it's a big show of trust on his part as well to even come back. That, and the fact that Elsa really needs something done with her ankle and she doesn't know what that might be herself, is what lets her accept the splint/cast. Berk clearly has a lot of experience with amputations, but with the rough life that they lead they probably go through a lot of breaks, dislocations and other injuries that can heal with time, which is how Hiccup can think of the splint/cast hybrid that he creates.

Unlike the previous day, when Hiccup was more trying to establish a connection with Elsa, he starts to really go into an almost scientific mode on the second day when he starts asking where she's from. All that he knows about her at the moment is that she's a wildling, that she has ice magic, and that she can be hurt like any normal person. Asking whether she's from the Wildlands if something he partially intends to be a check of whether they can communicate or not, so he's very surprised at the answer that he gets.

The set-up of the previous chapter comes into play here: Hiccup assumes that Elsa is from the Wildlands, but she reveals that she is from _Arendelle_. And it completely throws Hiccup for a loop.

The thing that we really start to see here, as well, is a culture clash between Berk and Arendelle. This was largely as a result of my trying to mash together two canons set 800-1,000 years apart without completely losing the feel of either, but I found that it made things interesting as well. But the basic gist is that Berk is on the edge of the 'Viking world', and Arendelle is very _much_ on the edge of the more southerly cultural setting. Honestly, Arendelle are thought of as being a little bit weird by most of the cities with which they trade. But less weird than Vikings, at least. This will get referred to from time to time, but basically, they're the edges of quite different cultural milieux and act quite differently as a result.

Elsa, however, is still far more worried about ordinary words. At this point, in the longer term, she's probably thinking of learning a few sentences of Northur so that she might be able to pass as a trader or something of that sort. There is an element, though, of sheer mental stimulation and finding it interesting - the memory that I spoke about last chapter, finally getting some use. A memory of that sort will pick up details fast, with whatever it's got to work with - so out in the Wildlands, Elsa can talk all about plants and animal movements, but this is an opportunity for her to use that brain power for something else. So she's probably enjoying it, just a little.

Snoggletog is the Viking holiday set roughly around the winter solstice - equivalent to Christmas, Yule, etc. It comes from the short _Gift of the Night Fury_ , which judging by the reference I watched for the first time around the point that I was writing this chapter.

 

 

 

The next section contains something that is, frankly, one of my favourite moments of the early fic.

> _“I’m not even going to ask. Now, apron on. Weather-vane for Jorgensen needs finishing, we’ve some tools need fixing, and the Nuts need their helmets strengthening again.”_
> 
> _“Yes, sir,” said Hiccup, grabbing his apron off the wall. “Jorgensen’s vain, Nuts need fixing, tools for making helmets. Got it.”_

The original version of this said:

> _"Now, apron on. Donkey needs shoeing, we've some tools need fixing, and the Nuts need their helmets strengthening again."_
> 
> _"Yes sir," said Hiccup, grabbing his apron off the wall. "Shoo the Nuts, fix the donkey, tools for making helmets. Got it."_

At some point in my editing, the comment appeared beside it of, 'Who the hell owns a donkey???" - unfortunately, this joke simply does not work on Berk where, so far as we can see, there are no donkeys to be found (again, I was only part-way through the second season of the TV series when I first wrote this chapter). I was pettily attached to this joke and spent far too long thinking of a replacement, until I was reminded of Spitelout's existence.

[Spitelout](https://40.media.tumblr.com/2ffbcf738b09e17af0fb02ed8d526e0b/tumblr_o1rkyjk2LB1u1x8wgo3_1280.png), Snotlout's father, appears extensively in the TV series. He is also voiced by David Tennant, who is having a whale of a time using his native Scottish accent. He one of Stoick's most trusted fighters, to judge how he is always at Stoick's side throughout the expedition to Dragon Island, and in both the first and second films he gets some amazing eyerolls and disgusted looks. (But that's something of a digression.) Snotlout's name has been revealed to be Snotlout Jorgenson, so the Jorgenson referred to here is his father, Spitelout.

Sorry, Spitelout, not even on screen and I'm making jokes at your expense.

 

 

 

For those playing along at home, yes, the mysterious 'Gronckle vomit' is Gronckle iron. This first appears in Defenders of Berk episode two, _The Iron Gronckle_. Explanations have been given for its constituents in the online game School of Dragons, and in Race to the Edge; these explanations actually differ from each other, but there you are. The essential idea is that it's an iron alloy, probably a variant of steel, which is light, strong and can be sharpened very well. But at the moment, all that Hiccup knows is that it's light and shiny. I imagined this puddle of Gronckle iron to be a fair size, because it will trickle on for a while now.

Once again, I use Hiccup's apprenticeship as an alibi - here, with his request to go rock-hounding. Rock-hounding is searching for rocks, in this case ones of various grades and hardnesses to be used as whetstones.

Gobber also starts throwing around blacksmithing terms here; blacksmithing was the first thing that I really got into research for while writing this fic. Edging axes can either be sharpening them, or inserting a harder steel to make a sharper edge. [This video on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLEM7amr21o) (not in any way mine, but a lovely example of what I'm talking about) shows the making of an axe; at about four minutes in the smith puts a thin sliver of harder (less tough) steel between the two plates that make up the end of the axe; when the axe is sharpened, it leaves a very sharp, hard edge with a tougher body that is less likely to break.

In case it isn't yet apparent, I'm something of a nerd.

Cold work is simpler to explain - it's working with iron that hasn't been put in a forge. (Interesting, this is the cold iron that is supposed to work against fae. Nothing to do with the fic, I just love that tidbit.)

Osvald here is Osvald the Agreeable, mentioned in _Twinsanity_ in Riders of Berk. Some sources have him as Oswald, but the subtitles on the episode themself say Osvald throughout, and that's the spelling I've gone with. He's the Chief of the Berserker tribe which Gobber mentions here.

 

 

 

When Hiccup returns, he's still going with basic things, but the soap here is kind of unusual because it's not really a necessity in the way that food and water are. It is, however, something very _human_ , and I feel that Hiccup was, consciously or not, accepting Elsa as human when he gave it to her. It also gives him his first real glimpse of Elsa as he's used to seeing people, because although people in Berk might get grubby from time to time, it's not really ground-in dirt; Vikings washed regularly, and despite Gobber's reluctance to bath in _What Flies Beneath_ I've generally gone with Vikings keeping fairly clean. Soap is pretty easy to make, with the right starting materials, but it's not something that Elsa really has with her. Plus it is just plain nice to be clean! This is something more meaningful than just food, particularly for Elsa.

Hiccup's gift of soap might also have to do with the reveal of the previous day, that Elsa is from Arendelle. Vikings tend to characterise - perhaps stereotype - Arendellens as somewhat prissy, hating dirt and not being able to get their hands dirty in the literal or metaphorical sense. Whether it's deliberate or not, part of Hiccup might be trying to give Elsa back that position as an Arendellen by offering her a way to get clean.

 

 

 

Now, here is where my having Elsa's memory be very good really comes into play. I tried to base Elsa's fractured Northur here on the first phrases that I remember being able to put together in other languages, so while they may be ragged I hope that they have a somewhat natural feel for a beginner in the language. She's also fairly good at guessing what Hiccup is trying to ask, and picking out key words in what he is saying, and can follow the general thread of conversation as long as Hiccup doesn't make any major leaps of logic.

Although it is not stated, Hiccup is deliberately speaking slowly and clearly, making sure to enunciate his words well; as the son of the chief he has needed to learn some Arendellen because, although they are very different in culture, they _are_ on the same island and will have to trade with each other. Stoick speaks good Arendellen, enough to discuss matters with the ruler of the kingdom in that language, but Hiccup is still learning at this stage. He knows what it's like to have to learn words and grammar, so when he's paying attention he is speaking carefully in Northur so that Elsa can pick up the individual words.

The words of the Wildling language ( _Marulosen_ ) here are loosely inspired by Finnish. Although Arendelle is based on Norway, Norwegian and Old Norse were honestly just too similar for what I was looking for here linguistically! So I stepped a country to the side and borrowed Finnish, so that I could make clearer the language difference and actually have a barrier in place.

This is also the first time we really get more than a hint of a magic-user other than Elsa - a woman or girl who could produce fire, and is now dead. Yes, Elsa's gesture indicates that she died violently - and Elsa was able to either see this or find it out, to be able to tell the story. We know now that Hiccup is a few years younger than Elsa, but even Hiccup, who lives in a rough world and longs to fight dragons, is shocked by how blunt she is that the woman is dead. And it is blunt, not flippant. Elsa is very used to the idea of death, perhaps in the same way that Hiccup is very used to the idea of injury and amputation; Berk has more social structure in place, and there is just plain a better chance of surviving a traumatic injury like the loss of a limb.

But there did used to be a wildling who had some sort of powers of fire, and she was killed, and unknown length of time ago.

And that's a bit of a grim note to end that chapter on, I'm afraid.

On the plus side, the brace is helping. It's probably not the ideal way to treat a broken ankle, but both of them are doing the best that they can. It would probably have been possible for Elsa to make herself a brace out of ice, but between her cautiousness about her ice powers - remember, she doesn't want to let go of the trollwort that Hiccup threw at her, and she treats it as if it were some sort of gift and not a weapon - and just plain not knowing what to do, she did not manage that. With the brace/cast/whatever it is in place she is better able to move around a little, and if Hiccup is bringing her food and water then it limits how much she has to move around at all. Of course, that leaves her time and her brain free to work on that Northur, and means her ankle has a better chance of healing cleanly. Which I can only hope indicates that, for some, there is a happier ending.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hiccup starts meeting with Elsa regularly, and finds small things from around the village to make her life easier, including clothes. Stoick decides to search for Dragon Island again, and asks Gobber to train the next five teens - Astrid, Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut - while he is gone. Hiccup wants to take part in the training as well, but Stoick refuses, until Gobber ends and wins the argument by suggesting that Hiccup act as his apprentice in the arena as well as in the forge. As soon as the boats are gone, Gobber and Hiccup begin preparing the arena, starting with letting the Gronckle out of her muzzle for the first day's training. When the others arrive, Hiccup accidentally gets caught up in the 'lesson',and just about manages to come out unscathed. While trying to wrangle the twins, Gobber almost gets himself fired at by the Gronckle, before Astrid intervenes and helps drive it back into its pen.**

 

* * *

 

 

Elsa's learning of the Viking language, in quick swathes at first and getting into more of the details as time goes on, is one of the threads that I deliberately ran through this whole fic. It'll become more analogy than actual language barrier later on, but for now she is still quite literally working out how to speak to Hiccup. The nods about her language difficulties came from a combination of research into the differences between Finnic and Germanic (specifically North Germanic) languages, although I got sidetracked along the way because it was so interesting! Her conjugations are supposed to be based on the fact that Finnish has four moods to Old Norse's three, while her difficulties with linguistic gender are because Finnish simply doesn't have it. (The conjugations thing is also because I personally find verb tense conjugations an absolute bastard to get right, so there was a little bit of personal satisfaction in being able to complain about them!)

The rag/old clothes collecting is another nod to Berk being a village community and very much relying on each other. This is particularly true of someone like Gobber (and indeed Hiccup's household in general) - they do not produce their own food, so they have to trade with those who do in goods or service. Stoick's role as chief is effectively service to his people; Gobber's role as smith is a little bit of both. It is also, as it turns out, my chance to introduce one of the first straight-up OCs of the work: Astrid's mother, Runa. For what it's worth, I was on a bit of a _Vikings_ kick when I really started working on her character, so in my head she looks more than a little like Lagertha. We know that Astrid used to have an uncle Finn Hofferson, from the TV episode _Fright of Passage_ , and in the S _chool of Dragons_ online game when talking about the Hofferson family she gives the notable names of her clan as female ones beginning with As-. But we don't know anything about her parents, save that they both live at the time of _Team Astrid_.

There's a bit more of Runa to come, with time, but she is very much a background character. Her name was not chosen along the usual Berkian troll-scaring lines because Astrid's does not follow that pattern; I surmised that such names are traditional in some families but not in others, considering Finn Hofferson and the existence of at least three Svens.

 

 

The sailing season in the North Sea is approximately March-April to September-October; outside of this time, the weather is too bad and the seas too rough, creating a larger chance of death at sea. While Hiccup's general complaints about Berk's weather have the air of exaggeration about them, they are certainly far north, so I added the sailing season to give an annual ebb and flow of activity.

Again, fanfiction allows me to go a little darker - the funerals of those killed by dragons being such a note. Dreamworks have given a value for the crowd scenes of the first film (and some of the shorts) as being maybe four hundred people; allowing for a slow decline in Berk's population over recent years due to dragon activity, the numbers for supporting this in a pre-industrial setting can be put generously at four or five births, and five or six deaths, in the average year. Half of those deaths would probably be children, in something approaching historical accuracy, but I will rarely be touching on anything that goes quite that far. Berk seems to have some skill in preventing or battling infections, to judge by the number of surviving amputees, so I have handwaved in that general direction. All the same, dragon attacks are causing deaths, never mind the food that they are taking.

The Snotlout-as-Hiccup's-cousin is something that comes from the books, where their fathers are brothers. No indication has been made either way in the films/TV series, although it is worth saying that it would be strange for us to now be six years in without anything being said. For the purposes of this fic, I have placed Snotlout as Hiccup's second cousin, with their grandparents being siblings. This is still easily enough shortened to 'cousin' to explain a family tie, without having to explain why Stoick Haddock and Spitelout Jorgenson have different surnames.

Gobber was obviously not involved in this argument in the film, but there is a great cut scene in which he carries goodbyes back and forth between them. It was mostly that which inspired me to have him step in and win the argument at this point. I guess this is also where the straight-up canon divergence elements start to come into this fic - by making Hiccup Gobber's apprentice at the arena, it lets me keep him around the dragons, but get and give a slightly different perspective on them. It also means that I can tread slightly different ground from the film, while following in roughly the same direction; I did not want this to be a straight rewrite of canon events, and although at this stage we're headed the same way, I wanted something at least a little bit novel.

(Unlike Astrid's mother, Dogsbreath is not _quite_ an OC. The name is taken from the book series, where his full title is Dogsbreath the Duhbrain. However, having not read the books, I am simply borrowing the name because I was amused by it, and hopefully as a nod to those fans who have read the novels.)

 

 

The Gronckle is the first dragon that we see up-close, as in the movie, but in a marginally different situation. Determining the sex of reptiles is almost notoriously difficult - particularly for some species, in which the cloaca must be carefully probed to determine the sex. Something of a scary thought if you're dealing with several _tonnes_ of Monstrous Nightmare or Hideous Zippleback. So it is perhaps understandable that Gobber has not yet occasioned to do so. Many captive reptiles, if kept alone, are left to reveal their sex either through laying dud eggs in the case of the females or, occasionally, producing a sperm plug in the case of the males. (Yes, that is just about as pleasant as it sounds.) However, all of these dragons are wild-caught, and any wild-caught animal needs to be treated carefully in case it is female and about to produce young.

The Gronckle, of course, makes an impressive introduction; three tonnes of reptile is really nothing to sneeze at. But Berkians do have this almost blasé attitude towards them; although Stoick is concerned about going after Scauldrons, for example, and the Red Death pretty well terrified everyone, they go toe-to-toe with Nadders, Gronckles and Zipplebacks on a regular basis, and at least a handful of them go up against the fire of the Monstrous Nightmares. Even if Hiccup has occasionally been getting outside and throwing himself into the line of quite literal fire, he simply doesn't have the decades of dragon-fighting experience that Gobber has to normalise the sight of an angry dragon, and it shows as soon as he faces off against one.

I still find it almost strange how naive Hiccup seems about the whole business of fighting dragons. Part of it is doubtless to do with the PG rating of the film - as viewers, it is also somewhat difficult to be scared of the most of the dragons when we never see one kill prior to the Red Death (and even then, on _screen_ it only kills the Monstrous Nightmare). But part of it is probably also what Stoick talks about when he says to Gobber that _"since the time he can walk, he's been... different_ " and refers to Hiccup searching for trolls. It implies that Hiccup's sense of reality might be a little bit blurry around the edges, that he puts too much stock in fairy tales and legends. So it's possible that he's also listened to a few too many stories about heroes, which tend to leave out certain parts. And finally, of course, and especially knowing what we do about how Valka was lost, we can probably assume that Stoick kept Hiccup sheltered to some extent, at least in terms of what dragons are capable of. Even by HTTYD2, he has never told Hiccup of the attack on the gathered chieftains, nor it seems of much of how Valka was lost.

One of the other details which got added into this scene later on was that of the Terror's slashed wings. The metal bars that cover the arena are close enough together to trap the larger dragons (and presumably sturdy enough to at least slow them down and allow them to be recaptured should they attempt to escape by melting through them), but they would not be able to stop a Terrible Terror were it to try to fly away. My effective, but cruel, solution was to slash the membrane of the Terror's wings so that it cannot fly - a line which, oddly enough, still got added in before I saw HTTYD2.

 

 

Given that its autumn in Berk, I could not help noting that in the film the arena is impeccable, which is why I gave Hiccup the job of cleaning it up (sorry, Hiccup). Again, this is the fic vs. animation situation, I suppose, but Gobber would definitely try to keep him out of trouble in some way or another. His comment about a broom not making him invisible is the very slightest of nods to Lu Tze in the _Discworld_ novels by Pratchett, who comments that a little monk with a broom can be all but invisible, fading right into the background.

Other than that, of course, our dragon generally gets to have much the same time as she does in canon. The main differences that I put into this scene is a possible answer to where everyone vanished to after Gobber proclaimed them 'out', and having the Gronckle consider firing at the one stationary target - Gobber. Again, this was mostly tweaking to avoid being a straight retread of the canon scene, as well as giving me the opportunity to indulge in a little Viking swearing along the way.

I make no bones about the fact that I have an often dirty, and occasionally childish, sense of humour. Gobber's colourful brand of language appeals to me on both of these levels at times, and such little things as him using the word skivvies and the broad swathes of his accent make me feel a little more at home among all of the American accents of the teens (in case my spelling hadn't made it apparent, I'm a Brit). So Gobber's more colourful phrases can be blamed entirely on my sense of humour, and in a setting in which Hiccup both lives and works with Gobber, I can only imagine that Hiccup will have occasionally picked up an interesting turn of phrase as well. Throughout the series, most of the references to Norse Religion & Lore are actually in the context of cursing, so I can't feel that Dreamworks would object too much either.

The reference to the Flightmare is also from _Fright of Passage_ referenced above. For those who have not seen it, the Flightmare is a dragon that appears every decade or so, and is believed to be so terrifying that it can cause even the strongest warriors to be paralysed by fear. Astrid's uncle, "Fearless" Finn Hofferson, was killed by the Flightmare, and she considers it a slight against her family honour to this day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The middle part of this chapter involves discussion of animal cruelty in terms of how the dragons in the arena are treated. The beginning and end of the section will be marked with *****.

**Hiccup goes to visit Elsa again, only to find that she is preparing to leave the sinkhole, saying that it is too dangerous for her to remain there. He offers to help her find a new place to camp, and to carry her things, and they hike southwest from the village. Along the way, they speak a little more about wildlings and how they treat people like Elsa. Together, they find the cove. Hiccup settles into a routine of helping Gobber at the academy and visiting Elsa at night, but also tries to steal time during the day to work on one of his inventions: the bola-thrower. During a dragon attack that comes unexpectedly close to the previous one, Hiccup brings out the bola thrower and uses it to shoot at the Night Fury. Before he can celebrate, however, he is knocked out, and wakes up to Gobber standing over him. He makes a pie for Astrid in thanks for scaring off the dragon that knocked him out.**

 

* * *

 

 

As they head into autumn, Hiccup is actually getting a few hours of sleep a night by this point, but weeks of mild sleep deprivation are probably starting to catch up with him by now! On the plus side, his communication with Elsa is getting much better; Elsa is now managing short sentences, and Hiccup is getting better at remembering not to ramble most of the time. 'Wings' and 'fire' were probably the important words in what he said about dragons, because goodness knows how 'reptile' might have been explained between them!

Elsa's grammatical quirk of 'must to leave' is, obviously, due to the fact that she is still learning Northur. Hiccup is not always bothering to correct her when what she says is understandable, and 'must to leave' is still perfectly understandable. In Finnish, the construction of needing to do something does indeed use the infinitive, the 'to leave'. Despite attempts at research, I could not for the life of me find out how Old Norse constructed the same phrase, and somewhat hope that it does not do the same because the joke would fall completely flat. (Well, I did warn in the fic proper that most jokes and puns would rely on English!)

Hiccup's isolation is something that exists more in the film than in the books, but there's great meta out there on that and I'm not going to retread it here. I'll sketch out the bare bones, though: Hiccup's treatment by everyone else ranges along a spectrum from outright bullying (Snotlout), support of the bullies (the twins), a neutral position (Astrid, at least at this point) to those who genuinely want to engage positively with him but _remain somewhat separate and disappointed_. That last category is vanishingly small, and it's most clearly occupied by Stoick and Gobber. They truly want to build good relationships with Hiccup, but are frustrated both because he does genuinely dangerous things, and because he sometimes doesn't seem to want to engage back. It's an understandable, gut-level response to the way that Hiccup has been treated, but it can be somewhat unhelpful. He is isolated in a village where everyone has to rely on everyone else; as the blacksmith's apprentice, he is economically tied-in, while socially cast-out.

Of course, this is a very different situation to Elsa, who is simply _alone_. No negative social interaction, no positive social interaction. But Hiccup feels a kinship of loneliness all the same, and there is a touch of desperation (possibly selfish, but understandable given the circumstances) over the idea of losing the one person who actually views him positively. Elsa does not get frustrated with Hiccup, does not assume that he has done something wrong, does not wish that he could tone down some aspects of his behaviour or develop others.

He hides it in cracking a joke - a weight joke, no less. Joking in general is deflection, but for Hiccup I would suspect that the weight jokes are almost a defensive thing - because being big is _good_ in Viking society. Being muscular is the pinnacle of Vikinghood, to judge by _Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Young Man_ , and in a society wehre food is scarce having extra weight as fat is also a good thing. Hiccup is short and skinny; even Alvin the Treacherous is bewildered that a 90lb boy can defeat him, and he does mention Hiccup's weight specifically. In _Viking For Hire_ , Stoick's " _Is that another crack about my weight?_ " suggests that Hiccup has made enough weight jokes in the past for it to be a known thing with him, but by the time we get to the TV series we don't see them so much. I've figured that they dropped away as Hiccup became more comfortable with himself, but that when they do occasionally bubble up they're a sign of Hiccup having a real crisis of confidence.

Even if there's a thread of selfishness, though, what Hiccup does is ultimately selfless - he offers to help Elsa in another, bigger way instead.

 

 

The scene with Hiccup fetching a stick for Elsa and her shaping it got completely rewritten; in early drafts, she used ice to reshape the surface, but at this point in the story using her magic so freely really didn't suit her. In some ways, it is frustrating to have a character with such incredible magic, but not really be able to write it because the character themself is so reluctant to! So bits and pieces of Elsa's magic got cut out throughout this fic, and this scene was one of them. Instead, we get a little bit more of Hiccup's blacksmithing coming to the fore, and just a touch of the ice where Elsa intends to use it just to protect herself from splinters. It's the sort of thing that's probably been used to doing in private, almost concessions to her power because despite how much she fears it, it does have these uses, and in this case she pretty much forgets that Hiccup is there.

> _"Say that when I am safe,"_ _she replied_

At risk of sounding a little bigheaded, I love this line, and the refrain that Elsa builds from it. She is so wound up in fear; it's as if we're catching her just before the coronation in terms of the years of grinding fear and almost-self-hatred that she's got going on. On a more character-focused note, Elsa might be struggling with some parts of her grammar, but she's absolutely nailing other parts.

The discussion between Hiccup and Elsa about dragons came largely from trying to figure why Berk could be so swarmed with dragons, yet Arendelle could have none at the far end of the same island. The space between them and the mountain range went some way towards it, but also just that Berk has more of the sort of food that dragons can easily take. Fish and animals make up a larger proportion of the diet in Berk; in Arendelle, just a few hundred miles south, the weather is good enough for cereal and other plant crops, and that is largely what Arendelle goes for. Yes, there is a ridiculous amount of background to this fic sometimes!

Hiccup's journal was a whole thing which I intended to expand on but, at the time, didn't. Perhaps at some point there will be an extra scene to use the journals, or they may come in still further down the series. At this point, I'm honestly not sure.

The reveal that we - and Hiccup - get at this point, however, is that wildlings don't like magic-users either. So far, we have actually had reference to three wildlings who have some sort of magic: one in chapter one, where Stoick said that Hiccup had met twice with a wildling who can call down lightning; the second in Elsa; and the third just the previous chapter when Elsa revealed that there was a wildling with fire powers who was violently killed. (Given Elsa's issues with grammatical gender, the third was probably but not definitely female.) Hiccup has said that wildlings only appear in very small groups, or even alone, so there's been no real yardstick for numbers to measure this again, and the assumption in Berk has always been that all wildlings were associated, in at least some way, with magic. _Dangerous_ magic, not the benevolent sort, because Berk does recognise a difference. They see wildlings as dangerous automatically, and therefore assume any magic they do must be dangerous as well.

I can't get too deeply into the discussion at this point because it's part of the slow worldbuilding as Hiccup gets to know Elsa and _her_ world (which is also, not coincidentally, the world furthest from either canon). But suffice to say that, as Hiccup has just guessed, Berk was wrong. Elsa then backs this up further by saying that most wildlings not only don't have magic, they attack those who do.  This is the first major indication that we get of wildling society and culture - and that it might not be as alien as Berk presumes.

> _"Loki's arse."_

I did warn that Hiccup had been around Gobber long enough to pick up his bad linguistic habits.

This time around, I picture Hiccup and Elsa entering the cove through the passage where Hiccup managed to get stuck with his shield in the film, although I added a tunnel to make it a little harder to find at all. Hiccup's description of the cove as _"more pleasant, more open"_ is what remains of an entirely too unsubtle comparison to the sinkhole where Elsa had previously been saying, after I winced at the resounding telling and not showing of it.

Although Hiccup was not the one who found the cove, his presence did make it possible. Without Hiccup, Elsa probably _would_ have headed more towards the mountains, to a more isolated place where she is therefore less likely to be attacked by those wildlings who do turn against magic-users. She would not admit it even if she did know the words at this point, but she does not want to give up talking to and spending time with him either, and going into the more habitable land in which the cove is found was therefore something of a compromise for her. Hiccup doesn't know it, but there was some teamwork involved.

 

*****

 

The trapdoors to feed the dragons are something which aren't in the film, but in the film there's a lot more focus on fighting the dragons. We already know that, we've seen the film, which is another reason that I went for Hiccup-as-appentice instead. First up, and I'll say it flatly, how the dragons are kept is not humane. It isn't meant to be. The Vikings have no need or want to provide the [five freedoms](https://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Satellite?blobcol=urlblob&blobheader=application/pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=RSPCABlob&blobwhere=1210683196122) that the RSPCA insists domestic animals must have in the UK, and do not have an interest in animal welfare of any sort. What they worry about is keeping the dragons alive and manageable, which basically means walking a fine line of low-level neglect to keep them strong enough to fight and want to fight, but not so strong that they could overpower a group of teens who react less smartly than Astrid does, or Gobber when he is by himself.

The dragons are kept in the pens for most of the time, though they are allowed out to exercise by moving around the arena, to stop their muscles from atrophy. They are given enough food and water to keep them alive, but not enough that they could bulk up beyond the muscle which they currently have. If they are injured in fights, their wounds are treated, but if they are injured too severely then they are simply put down and replaced instead. A Monstrous Nightmare is probably captured each spring or summer, in order to be killed by one of the trainees in autumn. Although we never see the dragons muzzled, other than Toothless, we know that muzzles for them exist per _How To Chose Your Dragon_ , when one is used on Thornado. Stormfly's flames at least are hot enough to melt rock, never mind iron or steel, so something must be done in order to stop her and the others from burning their way out of the pens. I figured that the muzzles were used, removed when the dragons were needed for fighting practice, and that Vikings had already accidentally stumbled on the fact that dragons are "not so fireproof on the inside" - with their jaws muzzled shut, the dragons would badly burn _themselves_ before they managed to burn their way out of the muzzle to get to the door.

The scenes in which Hiccup and the others are learning to fight the dragons are presented in a light and comedic way, and well done to Dreamworks for managing that! Because these are children learning how to not get killed by enormous, fire-breathing reptiles, and that's a pretty dark thing. But it certainly wasn't fun for the dragons either - all of the teens carry weapons, and none of them are afraid to use them if the dragons get too close. The dragons were essentially used as fighting animals, and considering they were kept below peak strength one could argue that they are treated worse than some prize fighting cocks or dogs nowadays. And that's a pretty dark thing to have going on.

 

*****

 

The paragraphs on Hiccup's misadventures at the arena are, of course, based on the scenes that we get in the movie where he is learning how to fight the dragons. Only, it is worth saying, he's having more trouble with the other teens than the dragons even at this point.

The scene in which he shoots down Toothless is pretty much as-canon, with a little bit of added detail about how Hiccup built the bola-throwers and about which dragons do what during the raids. The former is speculation based on canon; the latter is I'm pretty sure something which I made up again. But it made sense to me to 'use' the different dragons for different tasks, and though I'm not sure how intelligent the Red Death is I'm fairly sure it would manage that much.

Kudos to Heat+Salamander, both for being an awesome commenter and for spotting the emphasis on Hiccup's tuning out of the world around him and tuning in, as it were, to Toothless. This is only the beginning of what I intend to do with them, but Hiccup does really zoom in during that moment, and his focus is absolutely on the sky, and the dragon.

 

 

 

The habit of pies as thanks or apologies is something which appears in _When Lightning Strikes_ , and I may take it a little too far but it's mostly because I find the idea adorable. To my mind, food is always a good apology gift, especially in a place where food can be scarce, and the focus on pies is more of a Berk-specific cultural thing.

One of the things that HTTYD has a funny relationship with is medical accuracy. At the end of the film, Hiccup is clearly bruised and banged up, as can be expected - but his prosthetic is put on unrealistically early. In _When Lightning Strikes_ , Hiccup is struck by lightning and it is treated as a realistically serious medical problem, but in _A View to a Skrill_ Snotlout speaks gibberish and Tuffnut casually says that Snotlout has been struck by lightning twelve times. So I guess I tried to stabilise that a bit; when Hiccup gets knocked out here, he has some after-effects, but they're probably more mild than would be medically realistic. It's something that I've tried to carry on throughout, and I hope that I got the balance right.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hiccup works quickly through his tasks at the arena and heads for the cove, only to find, to his horror, Elsa facing a free, and snarling, Night Fury. After the Night Fury crashed into the cove, Elsa released it, but it has not flown away because of the injury to its tail. When she asks Hiccup for help, he is momentarily shocked, then has a surge of fellow-feeling for the dragon and agrees to help it. He discovers that it calms and nudges its head against his outstretched hand. They wash out the wound on its tail, then Elsa freezes it shut, and Elsa produces a fish to feed the dragon. It shows it's retractable teeth. Hiccup returns home soaked and tired, but talks to Gobber about improving the levers for the doors in the arena. The next day at the arena itself, Gobber has Hiccup set up the maze of fences, and announces that the Deadly Nadder is being bought out. After an accident that knocks down the fences and exposes the trainees, Hiccup dives into the arena and uses 'the hand thing' to stop the Nadder from firing on Fishlegs; he brushes it off. Gobber tells the trainees that they are going to be the ones tidying up the arena, since Hiccup was the one who stopped the Nadder.**

 

* * *

 

 

The first draft of this fic involved pounding out about the first ten chapters in two weeks, so it wasn't until I was posting at a more moderate pace that I realised just how long four chapters without Toothless could feel. To those who felt it stretch out over a month, I can only apologise! If it's any consolation, from here on out the name Toothless appears in every chapter but one, and that one is in about the third fic and involves some very serious Elsa drama. Likewise, Elsa gets mentioned in every chapter but one, and that one involves searching for missing dragons. They're intensely close, and I really hope to work for that three-way friendship for which I tagged.

I wanted to give Hiccup a moment a little like the one where he reads the Book of Dragons in canon, where everything just goes _wrong_ and he walks away because otherwise he'll get annoyed. We've all been there. I know that plenty of people empathised with Hiccup at the beginning of HTTYD for that exact reason, the almost microaggression-style moments that make up bullying that he experiences, the way that few things are really big enough to complain about but they all add up. As he says, pie is a silly thing to get in a fight over. But it's not really the pie.

So he retreats to the cove, where he and Elsa, despite the language and culture barriers, really treat each other more like _people_ than either has been treated in a while. It makes even a hike in the rain seem worthwhile.

Technically, Toothless appeared for the first time in the previous chapter, but considering he was just a shape in the sky I didn't really feel that was fair at that point. So this is the first time that we see him. I had him loose firstly so that we got more of a sense of the danger of him, and secondly because it was a logical conclusion of Elsa being there - though I'll get back to that in a minute. From a storytelling point of view, it also means a slightly different leap of faith for Hiccup; instead of looking to kill a defenseless creature and deciding not to, he looks at a moving, dangerous creature and agrees to help it. I don't think it's a better choice, but... I hope that it is one that has a similar sort of emotional resonance. It's that big, trusting step into the unknown, something that is so very Hiccup.

It's also a much bigger step than trusting Elsa, despite the fact that I did indeed injure Elsa's ankle so that there was a direct parallel between them. Elsa is physically about Hiccup's size, and looks human, so her body languages makes a very clear communication even if there's the language barrier. Hiccup has seen a little of her ice magic, but it seems pretty low-level and relatively non-destructive. On the other hand, Toothless is huge, physically powerful, and Hiccup has seen the incredible destruction that he can wreak when he takes out entire siege towers. I really didn't want this scene to feel like a rehash of the meeting with Elsa, so I changed things up a bit, and really wanted to emphasis how _dangerous_ Toothless felt to Hiccup, whereas his response to Elsa was more to do with how non-dangerous she suddenly seemed.

Elsa's decision to cut Toothless loose came from a very different place than Hiccup's did in the movie; it was largely one of fear. There was a pretty good chance, as she saw it, that Toothless would squirm loose, bite loose, or breathe fire; she hoped that if she cut at least one of the ropes and then ran/hid, he would get free of the rest and fly away by himself. And it probably would have worked were it not for the tail that stopped him from getting out of the cove. While it would probably be unfair to call her motives selfish, they were mostly motivated from fear - but killing him probably never really crossed her mind.

Elsa calling the dragon 'he' is another leftover from her struggles with grammar, not a deliberately anthropomorphisation. It might sound that way to Hiccup, however.

Again, we get a reference to Finn Hofferson, from _Fright of Passage_.

From where Hiccup is standing, Elsa has done a really stupid thing. We saw in the movie that right up until he looked into Toothless's eyes, he was quite willing to kill the Night Fury, so at this point he probably would have imagined that Elsa would either have killed/attempted to kill the dragon, or that she would have hidden away or tried to get out of the cove. Taking this third route, of just trying to get the Night Fury out, wouldn't have occurred to him without that moment of their eyes locking. But to Elsa - living in a state of near-constant fear, and very much used to being the defender in situations - it seemed rational.

So Hiccup's moment here, of looking into Toothless as it were, is from a little further away. He isn't literally holding the dragon's life in his hands, the way that he is in the movie, but at this point he could have still hustled Elsa out of the cove and fetched someone or someones from the village to kill the dragon, probably with crossbows and nets. Or simply have left it to die. But there's this moment and, I think, it's not just the 'seeing himself' that happens. It's seeing _Toothless_ , seeing the individual there, not just the 'unholy offspring of lightning and death itself'. He's seeing the creature, rather than this abstracted narrative that Berk tells about what dragons are. Hiccup already thinks of the dragons in the arena as individuals, and something separate from the ones that attack the village - he felt guilty for having less fish for the Monstrous Nightmare, less than twelve hours after shooting down the Night Fury. So this has an awful lot to do with seeing individuals instead of stereotypes, in the same way that real-world biases and assumptions can be challenged.

Also, I said I was going somewhere with the link between Hiccup and Toothless, and this is the first moment of it. The conviction that what Toothless did was not malicious, that he doesn't _hate_ Vikings in the way that Vikings assume dragons to do.

Toothless taking a step back was a very small gesture that to Hiccup represented a lot. Because suddenly he's looking at the fact that this Night Fury isn't just holding off from killing because it feels like it, or because it doesn't have any shots left - it looks as if it might actually be scared of them. To Hiccup in particular, who probably gets bullied and beaten up by kids younger than him as well as ones his own age, that's a mind-shattering feeling.

I'll be honest, this scene was one of the hardest to write in the entire fic. It was the first one that slowed me down from a chapter a day! Because the scene in the film is so exquisite. The film commentary talks about how proud they were to achieve it without words, and that is absolutely true, but all the little details of movement, both Hiccup's and Toothless's, are beautiful. We don't need Hiccup's narrative, because we can see it in his actions and his expressions. It's an absolutely astounding piece of storytelling, so going up against that? What kinda scary. I have the advantage of being in Hiccup's head, but that feels like telling not showing compared to the film. So this scene got reworked and rewritten and reworked again over the months, even as I wrote the rest of the fic, and I'm still not 100% happy with it. Just because it had so much to live up to.

There was some discussion with my lovely beta ashleybenlove about whether Elsa or Hiccup would be the first to touch the dragon. I'd made Elsa something very different from Hiccup, slightly feral, and played up her magic (Before I knew anything about Valka... when Valka appeared, I did do some horrified laughing in that it looked like I had ripped her off a bit. And then Heather happened in RTTE, and I kinda gave up and just went with it.), plus seeing her interaction with Toothless was interesting because it's a crossover and obviously something that wasn't in canon. But it needed to be Hiccup, I think, who made that first contact. Hiccup needed to find things for himself, break through his own barriers, and he had to do that himself rather than following something else. So Elsa steps in afterwards, to form the triangle friendship, and where Toothless has already accepted one human, it's a little easier to accept the second. Especially when said second hasn't been waving weapons about, hasn't been shouting, and smells like magic and the forest instead of like the village and the forge.

(Although Hiccup might smell a little of dragon by this point as well, after so long looking after them.)

  

 

 

The injury being bloody and messy is again something that I can manage because this is fanfiction and because I don't have to be PG rated. I went into it a bit more because it was something that I could do, looking for new ground again. The injury to Toothless is probably equivalent to getting the fingers of one hand ripped off. It's _nasty_. Unintentional, again, but there's a definite risk of infection. I went with dragons being warm to the touch because of the fire that they produce, and because of the similarity to dinosaurs who, science is now suggesting, were also warm-blooded or at least mesothermic.

This is another of those rare times that Elsa willingly uses her ice, in this case to bind a wound that it would be hard to bind otherwise. It would probably be possible to bandage it, but would involve binding the other half of the tail shut as well, which Hiccup is leery of at this point. The implication is indeed meant to be that Elsa has used this on herself before, for cuts that she received in the Wildlands. So she's not doing something completely untried here, even if she doesn't explain to Hiccup the whole reasoning.

And, of course, we had to have the "I could have sworn you had teeth" joke, just as the film did. The retractable teeth are adorable, and slightly random, and I love them to bits.

 

 

 

> _“Find any trolls?”_
> 
> _“Not this time,” said Hiccup._

*drops brick*

Hiccup wanting to improve the pulley/door systems is his overactive, inventive brain coming to the fore again. There's probably also some hope of making it easier for himself, seeing as those levers look to be pretty hefty. I also just love the idea of Gobber and Hiccup geeking out over their work together, probably to Stoick's frustration at times, and taking the opportunity to work all over the kitchen table on a project. Their friendship is sweet in the films and sweeter in the TV series, so I loved bringing it forwards into this as well.

 

 

 

Now that Hiccup sees the Night Fury as an individual, not just a species and a danger, it starts to sink in what he's done. There's a touch of angst about it, I guess, but it's also a bit of an existential crisis as he questions things. Apprenticing in the arena probably put in a crack or two, and Elsa fractured it a little more, but neither of them really had the impact that Toothless did because the dragons are still fought in the arena and Hiccup still at this point sees Elsa as the exception to wildlings, not the rule. Toothless really smashes through things for Hiccup, and from here on in he's going to be looking at things in quite a different way.

It's strange, in a way, because it all goes on in his head, so everyone around him is acting in the same manner. This allows me some moments of levity, be it Gobber talking about dragon dung (though note that Hiccup is now viewing it as more like any other type of dung, a possible fertilizer, and not untrustworthy just because it is from dragons) or the twins being, well, the twins.

A sidenote, Astrid declaring, _"For Frigg's sake!"_ is the first time that Frigg is mentioned in the fic. I don't believe that she's mentioned at all in the films or TV series, with Odin and Thor usually getting the spotlight. It was deliberately a goddess, because I felt that some of the female deities deserved a bit of love as well.

The entire development of the Book of Dragons is something which I have completely made up. There's no indication, in the films and series, that there is anything other than one set text which has (presumably) been copied so that more people can read it.

The first thing that I took from this is that Berk is astonishingly literate. The sagas, and the existence of many written and carved texts from the Viking Age, indicate that real-life Vikings were a pretty literate bunch as well, but full-blown books - albeit ones with fairly few words, by the time they're translated! - and the fact that Gobber expects all of the group to be able to read the Book of Dragons indicates that they are nearly universally literate. This was really interesting to me, because I've grown up with my grandfather telling me family stories, including _his_ grandmother who could only write her own name, and not read at all. That was only four generations ago, for me, so that's astounding. (And more so, I guess, the more that I write of this fic. My great-great-grandmother could barely write her name on her wedding certificate, and the spelling of the surname she took, Gray, varied from Grey to Gray even with my grandfather, who is still alive. So in living memory, there is this almost proto-literate element. And yet I can write hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction. And that just blows my mind. So, yeah.) So other Viking groups are likely to not have this universal literacy, and Arendelle definitely doesn't.

The giving of books as a wedding present was whimsy, I guess. It draws on the idea that having this knowledge is vital for setting up a household on Berk, and I suppose that I easily enough imagined children learning to read from the Book of Dragons. But it did allow me to have the idea of the Book being copied and developed by different families, making each copy slightly different from each other. I hoped this would add an element of interest... and actually pre-emptively wrote myself out of a plothole much further down the line! But that's something I'll come back to when it happens. I also pictured it as being something like the family Bible that my mother had, where she and her mother and her great-grandmother had all written in notes as time went on, about various family members. But instead of family information, it's things about dragons.

In _We Are A Family Part 1-2_ , the season finale of _Riders of Berk_ , Gobber speaks of "Great-Great-Grandpa Bork", and is the one who has previously been in possession of _all_ of Bork's, including the ones that didn't make it into the Book of Dragons. Where Gobber is about fifty at the time of the series, Bork was probably born 150-180 years before the series, and if the book was a lifetime's work (it certainly wasn't started until he was established as an adult, as indicated by the  _Book of Dragons_ short) then it may not have been completed until as 'recently' as a hundred years before the series. That's only a third of the time that Berk has been settled, so the first couple of centuries must have been particularly bad if they didn't have a systematic study that let them fight the dragons in an organised way. It's also a short enough time for it to have not really spread off Berk, something which will come up later.

Despite the talk of an Archipelago, and the fact that other islands are clearly inhabited - not to mention Trader Johann in the TV series, who talks of all sorts of far-off lands - Berk is very isolated. I figured this would create a setting where they only _really_ believe in the dragons that they've seen themselves. Everything beyond that goes through 'probably exists', through 'might exist', down to 'cool story I heard down the pub one night'. Most people on Berk probably don't care much about dragons that they don't have to fight, so I figured their books would evolve and lose the unnecessary parts - less to learn, less to read, less paper to use, easier to find the information you do want, if you need to. Gobber, being descended from Bork, has a copy which has kept even the notes that other people would deem unnecessary.

At the same time as this is going on, the Deadly Nadder is chasing the trainees around the arena in the same way as she did in the TV series. Only I have let her be a little more aggressive, actually aiming to hurt the trainees in the way that they're hurting her. The Nadder has been in the arena a long time, only coming out for exercise or to be fought; she's probably been injured by them in the past. She expects to fight whenever she's released, which is why she goes for the trainees here. It's frustration and fear and desperation, I guess, from this truly horrible situation she's been in. So she aims for the twins, they duck, and Astrid despite not liking Snotlout is a good person and has a protective nature, and gets Snotlout out of harm's way.

Using the same format as the film, I wanted to have Hiccup use what he had learnt from Toothless, with the arena dragons. And what he had, so far, was the hand thing. (It hadn't actually been called this in canon yet! It's such a simple name, and a simple gesture, which actually means _so much_.) So that's what he offers the Nadder, another huge leap of faith because this dragon isn't backing away from him, isn't injured and trying to get out of the cove - she's in full attack mode. But Hiccup goes with his gut, and is rewarded with this amazing moment when he realises that the Nadder can be turned away without violence as well.

And everyone else thinks that he's losing his mind. Think about how he was talking about Elsa just the previous in-universe day (and this chapter), and now everyone else is giving him much the same look. It's not quite like in the film, where he looks like he's becoming an amazing dragon fighter - he's just sort of a loon that threw himself in front of a dragon that was about to fire, and best anyone else can see it was pure luck that it didn't. The Chief's son is apparently trying to throw himself in front of dragons. It's a really good thing that Stoick isn't around to hear about this, and unlike the teens Gobber might be seeing something else here, something that he doesn't really betray in his words - he's seeing Valka. He's seeing Valka stepping between swords and dragons, and he of all people knows what happened to her (or what Stoick saw, at least, the only real witness), so Gobber's probably experiencing some concerns on that front and is wondering how to work through it. It's part of why he sends Hiccup away - he thinks that he's sending him away from the dragons.

 

> _"And a dragon who’s lost his fear of humans is the most dangerous of all._ "

Gobber is probably correct when he says this. It's something commonly said of wild animals, that when they lose their fear of humans it makes them more dangerous. I could only imagine that it would be true of dragons as well, that if they realise that humans are so much weaker, especially without their weapons, then it really would be easy for some of them to turn mankiller or even maneater.


	6. Chapter 6

**Hiccup returns to the cove, and while talking with Elsa comes upon the idea of making a prosthetic to replace Toothless's tailfin. He returns to work at the forge, where Fishlegs comes to find and thank him for saving him from the Nadder. As time passes, Hiccup refines the tailfin as he continues working at the arena. He talks to Elsa and learns a little more about her past, finding out that she was sent away from the wildlings at the age of eleven because of her magic; he also discovers that on the night that she left, the Silver Priests of Arendelle were going to force her into one of four trials for her magic, and her father begged for the Trial of Earth. Hiccup continues spending time with Elsa and Toothless in the cove, and discovering things about dragons. Toothless comes to his defence when he is mobbed by Terrible Terrors hoping for dragon nip. Back in Berk, the other teens have spotted Hiccup's strange behaviour but are not sure what to think of it; Tuffnut blames it on a 'secret wildling girlfriend'. In the arena, Hiccup uses another piece of information learnt by watching Toothless to protect Astrid from the Zippleback, distracting it into chasing its own tail.**

 

* * *

 

Having Hiccup do a lot of his thinking to another person was partially done to balance out the fic into dialogue as well as description. Having Hiccup talk to another person, rather than himself, basically! While films can get away with sections without dialogue and even make them look really beautiful (the HTTYD commentary talks about how they worked to do this), in fic it can be harder. Or, at least, I struggle with it! So I let him talk with Elsa a bit, as well as almost talking to Toothless.

Toothless's behaviour here is about 80% cat. I rescued a stray cat around the time that I started this fic, and despite attempts to find the owner ended up keeping him, thus winding up with two ex-stray cats. He acted even more cat-like than the one I'd already had, so his behaviour definitely crept in her as well, be it playing with the water dish or vocalising more. A shout-out here to the person who subtitles _Dreamworks Dragons_ , because at one point they described Toothless's noise as "[petulant growl]" in the actual subtitles, which is a hilarious easter egg find.

Throughout the fic, I also use the term "chuff" rather than "purr", with the larger dragons. This is deliberate. Purring and roaring require differently set-up voiceboxes, so any large cat that _can_ roar... _can't_ purr. What they do instead is called chuffing, and only happens on the exhale (purring is inhale and exhale). It's a silly, picky detail, but I got totally hung-up on it which is why I've used the term chuffing throughout. There are plenty of [videos on Youtube ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GbYw4Z_FR8)of tigers chuffing, and it's an amazing sound to listen to.

Other than that, I mostly made more explicit the train of thought which I think led Hiccup to having the idea to make the prosthetic tail for Toothless. As well as indicating how rough life on Berk is, the number of prosthetics that we see around Berk (especially in the TV series) must have created a sort of mental field in which Hiccup is very used to and comfortable with the idea of them. So his leaps here are firstly the idea of putting a prosthetic on a dragon, and secondly the idea of making one that moves.

Both Elsa and Toothless sometimes wonder what the hell that stream of noises coming out of Hiccup's mouth was. He tends to babble a bit, which can only be harder if you don't speak the language.

 

 

 

Gobber makes a good effort of wrangling six wilful teenagers, but we see enough of their personalities in the film and TV series to know that it can't always be easy. The blocks of ice to which he refers are something which we occasionally see Stoick making use of - a block of ice to the forehead, due to the headaches various residents of Berk can cause. Other than that, I just decided to go ahead and put more of Hiccup's blacksmithing experience in again, and give him some screentime to himself. At least for a moment.

I haven't read the books, but I'm trying to make the occasional reference mostly in recognition of them - by everything that I've read, they're amazing, and Cowell has woven a remarkable story. One of these nods, I guess, is the Hiccup-Fishlegs friendship from the books that is kind of understated in the movies. It does turn up in the TV series though, with them geeking out over dragons together, and I love it to bits.

In the TV series (and to an extent in the films), we see that Fishlegs is very interested in learning, to a level that might be called nerdy by today's standards. He gets excited about learning about new dragons, and loves it when he knows something that can help or comes across a dragon which he has only read about before. He's more scared of the dragons than the others, or at least more willing to vocalise it, and into the TV series this makes him the target of some bullying by Snotlout, who calls him a coward and mocks him on a regular basis. Comparing this to the film, I got the feeling that the only reason Fishlegs wasn't the bottom of the social hierarchy was because Hiccup was there - if Snotlout and the twins hadn't been bullying Hiccup, they would have turned on Fishlegs instead. Having been bullied as a teen, I can't really blame Fishlegs for wanting to not be bullied, even if that meant not making friends with Hiccup or not standing up for Hiccup. If he keeps his mouth shut, he can avoid being the subject of Snotlout's attentions.

The incident with the Nadder obviously changes that, because Hiccup isn't just sort of neutrally _there_ when it comes to Fishlegs. Hiccup makes the first step to really connect there, even if he says that anyone would have done it. (If Astrid had been closer to Fishlegs, she probably would have tackled him out of the way, and Hiccup would have ended up saving Snotlout instead.) But Fishlegs, maybe more so than some of the others, is aware that Hiccup took a really big risk even coming into the arena, and probably overestimates the risk because he doesn't know what Hiccup does. So he is really, truly grateful.

Fishlegs's mother's crabcakes get a reference in the TV episode _Breakneck Bog_. While trying to persuade Hiccup to leave Breakneck Bog and forget about the item supposedly from his mother, Fishlegs says: _"What if I gave you something from my mother? Or I could give you my mother! You know you love her crab cakes!"_

This is all that we know about Fishlegs's family. As I mentioned in the author's note, the names Piglegs and Froglegs come from the _School of Dragons_ online game, where all of the riders talk about their clans and give example names. Fishlegs doesn't say how he's related to them, and Piglegs is supposed to be make because _"he's mad at Wolflegs_ ", but I've repurposed them as names for Fishlegs's younger sisters simply because having all of the kids be only children seemed unrealistic for the setting. So Fishlegs gained younger sisters, and Snotlout got his younger sister Adelaide from the books. From various parts of the series, we also know that Astrid has both parents alive (in Race to the Edge episode _Team Astrid_ ), Snotlout has both parents (his father appears regularly, and he talks about his mother in Race to the Edge episode _Night of the Hunters Part 2_ ), and the twins have both parents (their father, named Tuffnut Thorston Sr. in the books, gets referenced during _In Dragons We Trust_ when Tuffnut is complaining about "his left foot [being] so much smellier than his right", and in _Bing! Bang! Boom!_ Tuffnut says "our mother will miss us" when he thinks they're being sent away). Fishlegs's father never gets such a reference.

So, yeah, I killed of Fishlegs's father, I guess. This was partially because he doesn't get mentioned, partially as a reminder of how dangerous fighting dragons can be and how many people on Berk have been lost, and I guess as well to allow him to parallel Hiccup a little more in both having lost one parent. But where Fishlegs has his mother and his sisters, Hiccup has his father and Gobber, and their approaches to dragons have become pretty different because of their personalities anyway.

 

 

 

And then I find myself in what is basically the equivalent to the amazing montage sequence where Hiccup discovers more about Toothless. Montages, I discovered, are insanely difficult to put into writing, especially if you are long-winded like me (is this DVD commentary showing that yet?). So I guess this was my attempt. It was certainly fun, though, to be inside Hiccup's head rather than outside it as it went on.

> “ _Kelaa aj atvaas._ ”

This is probably about the only Marulosen that, at this point, I haven't either translated or made clear from context. So, for the sake of completeness: it means 'wind and sky', taken from the lyrics of _Let it Go_.

Again, it was only when I was posting this week by week that I realise that Elsa's backstory was getting doled out in chunks pretty much every chapter. So in this one, we get more details of her exile, and learn that it effectively happened twice - once from Arendelle, and once from the main group of wildlings. Elsa is, in effect, a wildling among wildlings, so it adds some complexity to the wildling situation for a start. The age of eleven as when Elsa's powers kicked up a notch is taken from her age in _Do You Want to Build a Snowman_ _?_ when she [says to her parents](http://www.caps.media/201/3-frozenbr/full/frozen-disneyscreencaps.com-959.jpg), "I don't want to hurt you". Anna is eight at this point, so Elsa is eleven. It also ties into my early imprinting on X-Men and the idea of powers appearing or becoming stronger at puberty; basically, I figure that Elsa was something of an early bloomer, and as she was getting into puberty her powers increased.

The main thing that we get, though, is definitely the concept of the Silver Priests, the trials, and the more structured anti-magic concepts in Arendelle.

The Silver Priests probably came about in a bit of an odd way: they started with Elsa's father. Originally, I was going to have had Elsa's _father_ send her away, more disowning her than anything else, but turning that into going into the Wildlands was something of a jump, and I didn't want to go that far with Elsa's father being an antagonist. The King of Arendelle, upon whom Elsa's father is obviously going to be based here, was trying to do the right thing for Elsa in canon. He just got it hideously wrong. I do feel that what he did was mistake, not malice, so it didn't feel fair to have him be the one who sent her away. Which raised the question: who did?

So in the end, I tried to give Elsa's father a good role, a good choice. Of the Four Trials, one for each element, he asked for the Trial of Earth - banishment. It is indeed the most likely to be survived, and the others will be revealed in time but they are nastier. In a sense, he chose banishment for his eight-year-old daughter, but he was chosing it instead of death, trying to give her a chance. A horrific decision for a parent to be put in, but I hoped to show him facing a horror and making the best choice that he could.

The Silver Priests are a completely original religion for this setting. They draw a little bit of inspiration from the Red Priests of _A Song of Ice and Fire_ , but that is mostly the name; they have a significant chunk of the anti-magic sentiment from BBC's _Merlin_ , but _Merlin_ was Uther's doing and not a religious thing. I wanted to make them significantly different from Berkian religion, which looks to be (loosely) Norse Religion  & Lore based, pretty non-organised, and a low-level organic part of their society. Therefore, the Silver Priests were designed to be very organised, with Priests and Acolytes, a set temple, four deities with very strict roles and stories, and - this hasn't been revealed in the fic yet but shouldn't really be spoilers - they aren't native to Arendelle. The religion was founded elsewhere only a couple of centuries ago, and has spread throughout some of the more southerly kingdoms. So it's been in Arendelle for several generations, but not the entire time, which means that there's still a certain amount of clashing between Berk and the religion that turned up in the region after the peace with Arendelle was settled.

 

 

 

On a lighter note - and it was deliberately lighter than Elsa's backstory - I added in the scene of Toothless and Elsa firing at stones. This is due to Hiccup's continuing curiosity about the Night Fury; he's noticed previously that Toothless only ever takes out six targets, and this is in reference to the six-shot limit for Night Furies introduced in the TV series. I figure this isn't necessarily six shots so much as six _full power_ shots; the sort of blast that can destroy a siege tower must take more than the little puff of flame that Toothless uses, in canon, to get the Terrible Terror to stop trying to claim his fish. So Hiccup is finding out about Toothless, but he's also, intentionally or not, just wearing down a little bit of the wall Elsa builds around herself.

 

 

 

The scene with the Terrors was also added in quite late - this chapter was one of the most heavily-rewritten when it came to editing, because I was adding in more elements that I needed established for later in the story! The flocking is inspired, to an extent, by the scene in the _Book of Dragons_ short where Bork is mobbed by them for his chicken leg. I also wanted to give a bit of a sense of how Terrible Terrors could feel dangerous, because one by themself doesn't really have the awe or terror of some of the larger dragons. But in large numbers, I figure that they could be pretty frightening - maybe inspired a little by something like _The Birds (1963)_ , or the more recent _Resident Evil: Apocalypse_ which had a flock of birds killing a number of people.

Hiccup notes that they aren't hurting him, but it's probably not exactly easy to think that clearly when you're being mobbed by dozens of mid-sized dragons that have lots of teeth and claws, and if you try to put one away it's probably easy to get scratched. And then it just snowballs from there. It's possible to see how Vikings got the wrong end of the stick when they were faced with situations like this, so I don't _totally_ blame them for what happened. (Partially? Oh, yes. They have far more capacity to rationalise than the dragons do. But not totally.) This is also the fic version of the "how so fireproof on the inside" scene from the film, natch.

 

 

 

The 'I Heard' game appears in the TV series - _Race to Fireworm Island_. (The twins think they're playing it, instead of actually talking about things of which they're aware.) I just found the idea amusing and ran with it, but I thought that it also gave a bit more chance for the teens to show off their personalities. They all come across amazingly despite having very little screentime in the first film (the TV series, of course, has a lot more time available to develop them), and honestly they are just plain fun.

Bonus outtake line, probably from Tuffnut:

> _"I heard if you eat fireworm dung you can shook smoke out your ears."_

Mostly because we haven't seen fireworms yet...

The whole 'secret wildling girlfriend' thing was partially Tuffnut's ability to get halfway but not _completely_ to the truth, and partially that Hiccup is sneaking off at all hours of the night for clandestine meetings and it would have been a pretty easy conclusion to draw. Secret girlfriend, at least, not so much the wildling part. Although this fic isn't going to be Elsa/Hiccup, I have no problem with the ship (multishipper ahoy!) and have vague plans for a Rule 63 f/f fic with them. But I guess you could say that right now, Elsa is that role of Most Important Non-Family Person in Hiccup's life, shared with Toothless, so while the connection isn't romantic she has that sort of precedence for him. It's friendship, but right now it's his own close friendship (his one with Fishlegs is really still developing) and like his relationship with Toothless, it really goes beyond even 'best friend' and maybe heads into 'platonic soulmates'. (I've read platonic soulmates, and I've read three-way soulmates, but I'm not sure I've ever read three-way platonic soulmates, come to think of it...)

 

 

 

The last thing that we get, natch, is the Zippleback chasing its tails. Barf and Belch actually do this in the episode _Frozen_ (not making that name up), but my new cat was also developing a habit of doing this and it was about the cutest thing I've ever seen (it's still up there). It also seemed suitable as one of those things that looks funny when you know that the dragons aren't dangerous, but is weird or maybe borderline intimidating if you don't know. And it was easy for Hiccup to do.

Of course, we return at the end to Astrid's suspicions, which were implied last episode as the teens see him start to get better (but weren't sure what to do) and now Astrid sees this. She isn't sure what Hiccup did, or how he knew how to do it, but it's pretty clear to her that something is going on. This is probably the result of the build up of all the small incidents for Astrid, but again there's meta out there on what Astrid must have been seeing and going through, what it looked like from her side. With having Hiccup as Gobber's apprentice, it maybe seems a little less out-of-nowhere, but how Hiccup is acting doesn't really fit with the possible explanation of him learning extra things from Gobber that they aren't seeing. Because Gobber is as bewildered by this as Astrid is, right now.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First section discusses dragon keeping (including practices which are cruel to the dragon), and eating of dragon meat. The end of this section will be marked with ***** again.

**As they do a routine dental check on the Zippleback, Hiccup asks Gobber about whether it would be possible to reason with a dragon, which Gobber waves off as impossible. Shortly afterward, while cleaning out the pens one morning, Hiccup finds that the Gronckle has clawed the back wall apart to make a nest for the eight eggs she has laid. In the forest, Astrid starts to confront Hiccup, but he bluffs his way out. Elsa agrees with him to dig a pit for the first two Gronckle eggs, but when he returns to the village to pick up more of them Gobber announces that the ships have returned. Gobber finds the rest of the eggs, and Hiccup returns to to the cove that night distraught. While he is talking to Elsa, Astrid bursts in, and holds Hiccup to axe-edge while demanding to know what he has done. She gets her answer, as Elsa uses her magic and Toothless bounds out, both ready to defend Hiccup. Hiccup defuses the situation as best he can, just long enough for Astrid to demand an explanation.**

 

* * *

 

 

The tooth-cleaning scene was something that got added during redrafts, but I'm glad that it did make it in, not least because we get to see more of Gobber and Hiccup interacting. The cleaning of dragons' teeth becomes a plot point in the TV episode _Viking For Hire_ , and it struck me somewhere along the line that it does no good keeping dragons for fighting if their teeth are in bad shape. Related to the dragon keeping balance that I talked about in chapter four, I guess - you want to keep the dragon healthy enough to be useful as a fighting implement.

Dragons regrowing their teeth is based on reptiles, who do the same thing. Although they can regrow quicker when the animals are younger, they're capable of it throughout their lives.

It was, though, pretty painful to write Gobber in this scene. Gobber is a character that I absolutely love (and I don't see hate for him from the fandom either, which is really nice), and he very quickly comes round to being one of the dragons' most staunch defenders, but at this point in canon he is still blasé about killing them. Maybe less enthusiastic than some of the others (see Stoick's excitement when he thinks that he can talk to Hiccup, spilling guts and mounting heads on spikes), but he's still comfortable with killing them and with training others to kill them, and there's no suggestion of inner turmoil. So I hoped to show here that what Gobber's doing is pragmatic, not cruel, and he does care about the dragons at least to the extent of seeing them as tools that have to be kept well. Which, yeah, was kind of uncomfortable to write, because Hiccup (and the reader) knows that Gobber is working from the wrong ideas, the wrong basis. He is terribly misinformed, misguided. But he's not cruel, and I hope that comes across.

We also get probably one of the darker notes so far, talk of eating dragons. In the book, this happens. In the TV series, Hiccup _thinks_ that Dagur is offering him Gronckle meat during _The Night and the Fury_ , and Dagur sounds apologetic when he says that it's actually yak. My gut feeling was that there were two ways of approaching the idea of eating dragon. Firstly: pride. You have defeated a very dangerous foe, and eating the flesh is a sign of that victory. The second way, though, would be pragmatism or necessity - this is a preindustrial society that would face food shortages anyway, the dragons are further impacting their food supplies, and a Zippleback weighs a good three and a half tonnes. That's a lot of meat that would go to waste if it were just destroyed por burnt. Since dragons eat mostly fish, their flesh would probably taste pretty good (sorry to say). But if Berk tends more towards the second model, where I've put it, then it would be seen as a bit like roadkill, perhaps, and while people would eat it, there probably would be a certain privilege to not eating it. (This was a bit of a handwave so that Hiccup did not have to.) So that was something of a fridge horror moment for Hiccup when he realises that even if he hasn't killed dragon, he's eaten it at some point in his life.

A lagu rune is shaped like ᛚ (should be visible with rendering support, if not, please see image below) or:

(Image from wikipedia, I'm not above using it.)

 

*****

 

One of the things which I sort of wish we'd seen in the movies (it happens in the TV series at least) was Hiccup interacting with the dragons other than Toothless in a non-combat context. Obviously, that's harder to do when the only reason he's at the arena is to fight, but I jumped at the chance when I realised I could show or refer to him interacting, almost playing, with the dragons. Throwing fish for the Zippleback was mentioned in the first section, and now we see him treating the Nadder more kindly than he needs to, and intending to do the same with the Gronckle. It was intentionally reminiscent of how volunteers and workers at animal shelters tend to act! You might have work to do, but you'll take the opportunity to make life better for the animals as well.

Despite it all, though, he has to put the Nadder back in her pen. It comes up later explicitly from Hiccup, but there's a certain fridge horror (for the audience, this time) to seeing the inside of the dragons' pens in the TV series. They are bare rock on four sides; by the TV series, most of the doors have been made so that they are grids, to let light in, but at least one is still solid as of _Frozen_. And they are not particularly large, either. So it has to be really unpleasant to live in them (frankly, cruelty), which is why the Nadder is so reluctant. Hiccup has brightened her day, though.

When it comes to getting out of the muzzle, the Gronckle probably burned the inside of her mouth in order to do so, although it's possible that Gronckles are somewhat more 'fireproof on the inside' considering they actually produce a more lava-like substance rather than a gas which can be ignited externally. In any case, she's going to put this much effort because it's pretty essential at this point that she make some sort of nest for her eggs.

The eggs are, partially, because I love baby dragons. The baby dragons in _Gift of the Night Fury_ are absolutely adorable, especially the Gronckles which look to already be in that tubby stage that puppies and kittens take a few weeks to get to. But it's also partially to light a fire under Hiccup's backside, because even if he can't bring himself to push over the adult dragons, he might just do so over the thought of hatchlings. There is, after all, much less of an argument when it comes to baby dragons that have never even had the opportunity to hurt anyone.

 

 

 

Astrid has been suspicious for a while now, but it's partially been a case of finding Hiccup without anyone else nearby in order to confront him. There has probably been a certain amount of frustrated searching in the woods going on already!

Her confrontation here, though, is maybe less about finding out what Hiccup's been up to, so much as getting him to stop doing what seem to her like absurdly dangerous things. Jumping in front of an attacking Nadder, hitting a Zippleback, and plain acting like wary around the dragons considering the Gronckle found an opportunity to lick his face. Even if Astrid doesn't act _frightened_ of dragons (until, in the movie, she comes face-to-face with an unexpected Night Fury and Hiccup starts acting as weird as hell too), she's still cautious around them, respectful I guess, which is honestly a pretty good way to stay alive. Most zoo keepers, animal wranglers, snake wranglers, pretty much anyone who works with large and/or dangerous animals will say that it's important to respect them and what they can do.

From what she sees, Hiccup is not giving the dragons appropriate respect. And that _is_ dangerous, not just for Hiccup but for those around him, especially someone like Astrid who would try to cover a 'weaker' group member like Hiccup. So her anger here is to do with him endangering himself and others than any sort of jealousy or injured pride about him doing well. The light glinting off her axe is a reference to the fact that it does so in the movie, and I was surprised to see the term "yak dung" turn up during _Race to the Edge_ after I;d been using it for a while. It's probably a fairly obvious cleaning-up of bullshit, though.

 

 

 

One of the things I really had to try to iron out during the redraft was how much Elsa uses her magic, when, and in front of whom. The original idea for this fic was, well, one fic, not a series! So it mostly involved toning down or even removing Elsa's magic altogether; this scene made it through the cut largely because it was so cute (cats do the exact same thing when you put string or a feather on their head and, yup, that's pretty cute as well), but also because it's _Toothless_. Although she's acting less ashamed of these small deliberate uses of magic in front of Hiccup, she doesn't instigate them in front of him. She probably still feels guilty about being 'caught' doing magic in front of _humans_ at this stage, and at least part of her reason for hiding it is because she doesn't want to make Hiccup uncomfortable by seeing her guilty.

Elsa is a mess in this fic, I'm not going to lie. We've seen most of her backstory now, and know her reasons - she's been spurned by two peoples for her magic, and attacked repeatedly; she's lived alone for seven years. If anything, she's probably come out impressively normal in the fact that she's able to talk to people, and has in fact survived at all. So to say that she has issues is really an understatement, and at least one of them that is on show here in her performing magic in front of Toothless but not Hiccup. She doesn't quite see _herself_ as human, at least not any more. But it's something that she won't even want to try to express to Hiccup, so for now it's more a case of her having half a handle on that quietly. But that is why she isn't afraid of using her magic around Toothless, in very small ways; she knows that he won't judge her for it. She just fears that Hiccup will.

The reference to Toothless licking his genitals is once again dedicated to the cat that I acquired around the time of beginning this fic. Cat, sometimes you care cute, but sometimes you really are not. I have no idea why he does it and the other one doesn't, but there you go.

 

 

The brief scene of the ships coming back is just to set things up. I had a couple of attempts at writing out, in full, the scene where Gobber found and destroyed the eggs, but it ended up not working and I found that the semi-flashback feel of the eggs being removed and the knocking-out of the Zippleback worked better as a way to show it all happening faster than Hiccup can process and in a sense just being two terrible things back-to-back for him. It's also supposed to indicate how everything is just tumbling together in his head as he leaves, that way that sometimes it's impossible to get certain thoughts out of your head and you can't stop seeing or thinking of something. Hiccup feels now like he's not just failed at being a Viking, he's failed at _not_ being a Viking by failing to protect the dragon eggs, and that's what drives him to be so careless as he makes his way to the cove again.

We don't really see, in canon, how much Hiccup's discovery casts into a different light the actions of people around him. Throughout the first film, we're mostly with Hiccup's POV, and obviously into the TV series and second film dragons and Vikings are allies. Presumably, a lot of those changes just swept through Berk during the time that Hiccup was unconscious at the end of the film, and most of Berk don't really seem like the soul-searching type in any case. But Hiccup clearly does think about things, and to be honest overthink things at times as well, so seeing him understand how his discoveries rewrite the entirety of Berk's history? Wasn't something that I could easily pass by.

This, I guess, is the payoff for the scene at the beginning of the chapter where Gobber is taking care of the dragons' teeth and, at the same time, talking somewhat derisively about the idea of working with dragons. Dragons are very much _dangerous wild creatures_ in Gobber's mind, and he's quite easily able to compartmentalise keeping the dragons in the arena alive and killing any others that aren't of use. But for Hiccup, who doesn't have those walls, making the split in his mind between the Gobber he knows and the Gobber that kills dragons is a real issue, not least since he has probably been fooling himself a bit into thinking that Gobber cares for the dragons as well. After all, Gobber feeds and waters them, sees to any injuries that they get, and Hiccup struggles in his mind to understand that Gobber is doing that while not intrinsically caring about the dragons themselves.

It is largely an escape from this dragon-kill-lauding atmosphere that he craves, this time around, as he goes to Toothless and Elsa, but there's also an element of wanting to not have to keep secrets. Part of him wonders why he didn't speak up when the eggs were being taken away, why he couldn't, but with how quickly it happened and the number of people there it was far too much. In the film, Hiccup has been prepping himself before entering the kill ring, but here his opportunity to brace himself got taken away from him and the result was helplessness, fear, and the inability to speak up.

Elsa really wants to comfort Hiccup at this point, which is a natural human reaction, and it is absolutely her fear about her magic that holds her back. It's something that happens a lot - she goes to touch someone, then stops herself. She hasn't developed her canon instinct to not make the move at all because she hasn't been around people.

Her instinct to say "I'm sorry" is actually something that she's picked up from Hiccup as well, so his being surprised here is a little out of place but probably understandable considering everything that's happened. Hiccup's explosion of words is to do with that desire to not keep secrets that has just driven him out of Berk, but it probably also has to do with his own guilt as well. Not having told Elsa about her ankle, or about Toothless's tail, is suddenly feeling a lot less a thing that he can fix, and a lot more like a huge admission of guilt. So he sort of blurts it all out, then realises that he has done so too fast for Elsa to actually understand which rather defeats the point of unburdening himself in the first place.

And then, with immaculate timing, Astrid makes her entrance.

In Astrid's defence, she has in fact walked in to what looks like an absolutely terrible scene. Hiccup has run off on the night of what should be a celebration, into the Wildlands and is talking to a complete stranger. Berk is so small that everyone knows everyone, and all visitors come by boat. And the thing is that in some ways, Astrid is absolutely right, because Hiccup _is_ talking to an outsider. The only thing that she gauges wrongly is the threat that she fears Elsa might be to Berk. (And that's before the dragon gets involved.)

One day, I might actually do an outtake from Astrid's POV at this point, because things go absolutely crazy here. Suddenly there's a dragon, and there's magic, and it all goes chaotic. The scene was actually pretty straightforward, though, with the one real detail of it being deliberately putting Hiccup in the middle of a triangle between Astrid, Elsa and Toothless. He's becoming the point of balance and of communication between various different viewpoints here. He also very deliberately uses names for Elsa and Toothless, quickly establishing them as _persons_ to Astrid. And it does say a lot to Astrid that she stops long enough to even ask the questions that she does.


	8. Chapter 8

**Astrid gives Hiccup a chance to explain, barely. He explains that Elsa is human, her magic was not by choice, and that he hurt her before he helped her. When Astrid asks about dragons, Hiccup takes her flying instead, to show her what it can be like. When they land, Toothless throws up half a fish to share with Astrid, and despite her trepidation she takes a bite. Hiccup and Astrid walk back to Berk, narrowly avoid the twins, and Hiccup explains his plan: to find the nest, and show his father how little they know about dragons. He dresses in dark clothes and lets Toothless lead him to Dragon Island. When they enter, the dragons are scared and flighty, and the Red Death emerges out of the depths. Hiccup is ready to leave, but Toothless has more to show him: the eggs that the Red Death has laid, just starting to hatch. As the first one explodes, Hiccup and Toothless flee, with hundreds of other dragons heading in the same direction.**

 

* * *

 

 

This is a huge, busy chapter in many ways, and it's kind of the 'second act' of the first film coming to an end all at once. Of course, it has the added complication of Elsa. I tried to put in a few moments of levity to stop it from feeling too grimdark, and Elsa almost taking off her shirt, and then later assuring Astrid that Hiccup "falls off less" are both towards this. The nearly-taking off of the shirt is actually a sign of huge nervousness and submissiveness, in a way, from Elsa; she's trying to appease this stranger with an axe and an attitude; she probably also feels a little bit of a thief, and still feels bad for that. But under a less frantic situation, she would not be considering taking off her shirt!

Hiccup getting to tell Astrid what happened is the first time that he actually gets to be the one explaining. He's almost the translator for Elsa in this scene, taking the bits and pieces that she has provided and turning them into a story that Berk would accept. In some ways, it's not fair of him to talk over her, but she's really too nervy to be able to explain right now, and it's unlikely that she would be able to phrase it _just so_ in a way that Astrid would accept. Hiccup knows Astrid better. A translator in the same language.

In just listening to Hiccup, Astrid is taking a really big risk. She's not much of a risk-taker by nature, I don't think; although she does the most dramatic physical stunts, and pushes herself and Stormfly the hardest in the TV series, we never see her fail at them. That suggests that she trains hard and breaks things down into steps in order to minimise the risk each time she tries something new. Compare to Hiccup, who sometimes just kinda goes for things (DragonFly, I'm looking at you) and she is actually more conservative in what she does. She doesn't want to have to innovate in a combat situation, I think, and trains every detail that she can in order to protect against that. Like someone revising everything before they sit a test.

But what does help out is Elsa's choice of actions, in the previous chapter and in this one. She _blocks_ Astrid from getting her axe, she _removes_ the axe, and she doesn't act aggressively at any point. I think Astrid would respect that. It makes it look more like actions of necessity, not an attack.

 

 

 

The flight was fun, but once again I kind of faced the problem that the film did it so well! Both in terms of Toothless being annoyed with Astrid (she didn't run here, so he messes with her a bit, but he's mostly just testing her determination. She passes.) and in terms of the _romantic flight_ aspect. So I won't natter on too much!

The guardians are the huge statues we see on a pretty regular basis. I nearly called them _fylgja_ , which are spirits in Norse Religion & Lore that guide people to their fate, but they seemed more protective in nature than anything else to me. So that was something that got dropped.

Lars Thorston gets mentioned in the TV series, in _The Heather Report Part 1_ , when the twins talk about "our cousin Lars". There's no real indication as to how old he is or even, in fact, what his surname is, but I needed a name so congratulations, Lars!

I do find it a pity that we never see the reactions of the other riders to having dragons throw up fish for them to eat. I'm not entirely sure how Hiccup actually figured out that was what Toothless wanted, but he does seem very good at speaking Dragon Body Language. This is probably also Toothless testing Astrid a bit, though with Hiccup in the movie I think it was genuinely trying to share. (In the TV series, we see Snotlout casually eating fish that Hookfang has hawked up for him, but... well, that's Snotlout, and that's further into the series. We never see that first attempt.)

 

 

 

Astrid very quickly goes from willing to fight dragons to willing to help them. It's nearly as big of a turnaround as Hiccup makes (not so far into friendship, yet, but she started from at least as hostile a position), and in a shorter time. She's not as much of an innovator as Hiccup, but she's as loyal as they come, and her probable background respect for Hiccup as the blacksmith's apprentice (the [deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcNNAeh5LJU) of them in the smithy is great) combined with a very persuasive demonstration of what dragons can be is enough to bring her round _really_ quickly. Especially for someone whose thinking has seemed to orthodox up to now.

In any case, what Hiccup does pretty quickly is take the pressure off her again. His success in changing her mind is probably part of what prompts him to push on and try to change his father's mind here, because he's seen that she's had this big shift in beliefs and hopes that his father will be able to do the same. (Of course, there's the difference between Astrid, at 15 and with no dragon kills, and Stoick at 45 with multiple dragon kills, but that's not something that's occurring to Hiccup right now.)

Again, the main reason that I went with the change to Hiccup's plan - actively looking for the nest, instead of stumbling across it - was just to shake things up a little. But I did want to give Hiccup a bit of his agency back, to balance what happens later in the chapter when Toothless takes Hiccup further down into the nest to see the eggs. I didn't want Hiccup to be totally carted around like a sack of cabbages, but to make it more of a combined set of actions in the way that Romantic Flight became.

The final point of note before Hiccup leaves Berk is probably Ruffnut's filthy song. It is original (I'm sorry), and I prevaricated for quite a long time over whether or not to include it, since it moves the first instance of swearing in the story (other than arse) from the fourth fic to the first! The song in the first draft was only marginally better, being a slight variation on _Do Your Balls Hang Low?_

> Do your balls hang low? Do they wobble to and fro?  
>  Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow?  
>  Can you toss them over your shoulder like a hairy Outcast soldier?  
>  Do your balls hang low?

In the second draft, further verses for this song followed, and they might make it into an outtake because they are so entertainingly dirty. In the end, though, I decided to bite the bullet and use my own dirty-lyriced song. It's actually the first piece of Norse-inspired poetry that we get as well, for which I can only apologise; future instances will not all be so dirty!

> There were pricks a-plenty,   
>  and cocks so copious,  
>  ‘mongst the bonny bastards of Berk.  
>  But the slits were so scanty,   
>  the fucks were so few  
>  They just couldn't get 'em to work.

At the risk of showing the enormity of my nerdery...this is loosely based on the Old Norse poetry form _ljóðaháttr_. While there is an ABCDEC rhyme scheme, more important for this was the alliteration. Pricks/plenty, cocks/copious, bonny/bastards/Berk, slits/scanty, fucks/few were all deliberately chosen for their alliteration. (In ljóðaháttr, there would usually be alliteration from lines A to B, and D to E, but I dropped this in favour of internal alliteration.) There are two stresses to lines A, B, D and E, and three stresses to the C lines, which as far as I can tell is true to ljóðaháttr.

The other inspiration for this was, frankly, rugby songs. I have bookmarked several sites of rugby songs, most of which are dirty in some way or another (and any number of which are anatomically impossible as well), and have some really quite eye-opening mental imagery. Norse poetry and rugby songs is... probably one of the more interesting combinations that I've put together over the years.

 

 

 

So Hiccup's off, and the dressing in dark clothing is once again something that's harder for animation. The nod to the baffled compasses is a bit of headcanon as to how the Vikings managed to get so spectacularly lost for three hundred years. There's a mountainous area in Britain which is famous for disrupting compasses - iron deposits close to the surface make the compass basically go round and round in circles. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the name (I hope that my father, who once got stuck up there in fog, would forgive me), but if I remember or rediscover it I will be sure to add it in. So basically, this is what's happening around Dragon Island - compasses are being sent haywire by iron deposits and/or the tectonic activity. The fog is leaving them unable to use the stars. Although sunstone compasses (seen in the _School of Dragons_ online game) would have allowed them to navigate during the day, between difficulty navigating and defensive dragons I hoped that it would explain why the Vikings have been so lost for so long.

(Although I have to admit, at least one summary will include a joke at the expense of this blank spot.)

 

 

 

My description of what happened in the nest relies largely on the senses other than sight and hearing specifically because it's what the film can't do. I'm probably banging this drum by now, but that's the reason behind a lot of the description (aside from all those classes everyone gets in school telling you to use all five sense, of course). The feel of the heat and the growl, the smell of the sulphur; it must be an insane amount of information for Hiccup to process, and something seriously unlike anything that he's ever experienced before. Even being relatively used to the smell and sounds of dragons now, both from Toothless and from being an apprentice in the arena, it has to be something totally different to go right into this dragons' lair.

The Nightmare that dies on-screen here is the first dragon that we see die explicitly in the fic (though there's plenty of other death mentioned, and the replacement Gronckle from the very beginning. This is the same as it was in the film, and it's probably the first time since meeting Toothless that _Hiccup_ has seen a dragon killed in front of him in a way that he can't miss, can't ignore, and which isn't somewhere in the background of his awareness. This is right in front of him, and it's probably a moment that retroactively affects how he sees a lot of the dragon deaths that he must have seen over the years. And it's got to be pretty shocking, to see the dragon that is the largest that Berk sees, and considered the biggest prize (apart from the impossible Night Fury), snapped up as just a mouthful. It completely recalibrates the _scale_ of dragons, and gives this impression that what Berk sees is really just the tip of the iceberg.

It's this shock which is still rattling Hiccup as Toothless takes him down further into the volcano. This combines with what Hiccup as heard, and what he knows about his mother, to mean that there is this one last whisper of doubt about Toothless's intentions in this scene, as far as Hiccup's concerned. As readers, we know Toothless, have known him probably for longer than Hiccup has! But for Hiccup, this is probably his final moment of doubt, and the last big test of his trust in Toothless, for many years.

I put in the eggs because I thought they seemed interesting - and because they will make the final conflict more interesting, something I'll return to at the time. But it also meant that I got a payoff, as it were, for the Gronckle eggs. We've had dragon eggs in the beginning of the story, and we've seen Gobber comment that they need to be dealt with before they explode. It gave a symmetry to this first arc that I thought worked well.

As an aside at this point, I guess: there's no indication in canon that Gobber _didn't_ know about exploding dragon eggs, just that Astrid and the other teens didn't. It's also only two to four months between HTTYD and Gift of the Night Fury, by my guesstimates, so Gobber might not have been able to tell them everything in that time. (They also didn't ask!) But I figured that in this fic, if they keep the dragons year-round for training, then there must have been occasions when dragons have been taken before they laid their eggs, and then laid them during captivity. So it was sort of a natural consequence of headcanoning how the arena worked.

Given how developed the hatchlings seem, and how short a time there is between the eggs being laid and their hatching, I also figured that the dragons were ovoviviparous - that is, they basically retain the eggs inside until they are ready or almost ready to hatch. This is how even quite a large dragon egg can seem to hatch in only a few days.

As I stated in the notes on the main fic (to explain myself!), the description of the Red Death legend comes from Viking material. Supposedly, every thousand years, the Red Death lays hundreds of eggs which, when hatched, fight until there is only one left. Hundreds of eggs might have been a bit many at this point! Some oral cultures do have a tendency to exaggeration, especially of numbers, in order to seem mrore 'mythic' or 'legendary'. Vikings were not above this either. So I've given the Red Death dozens of eggs, which are going to be more than enough for what I need plot-wise.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hiccup and Toothless flee back to Berk. They are hit with the bola thrower and crash to the ground; Hiccup comes round surrounded by people and tied to Toothless's back. He is cut loose just in time for Stoick to arrive and be shown the saddle. Hiccup is locked in the jail for the rest of the night, and when the attack is over Stoick returns to ask him what happened. They argue, and in the process Hiccup lets slip that it was Toothless who guided him to Dragon Island. Unable to do anything, Hiccup is taken by surprise when Astrid and Elsa come into the jail, and Astrid says that Stoick and the others have left. Elsa coats the bars of the jail in ice, and Astrid breaks it open. With no boats left, the only thing that could possibly provide transport is the dragons, but when Hiccup goes to them he is shocked to find the other teens there saying that they intend to come as well. There is no time to argue, and all that he can really do is accept their offer for help, and get them into the air.**

 

* * *

 

 

Shit, meet fan. Hiccup is still piecing things together as they fly back towards Berk and yes, Toothless is literally running on fear as well. The eyes of the dragons in chapter eight were meant to imply that the Red Death has at least some psychic power over the dragons around her, and though Toothless seemed even in canon to be less influenced, he has still be taking part in the attacks for some time to judge by how used to his presence in the skies the Vikings are. My headcanon is that Hiccup's presence has helped Toothless break that by giving him something/someone else to connect with and focus on. So Toothless's reaction is absolutely fear of being drawn back into the Red Death's power, or maybe even worry that the Red Death can _tell_ that he is trying to work with a human and communicate that _this is why we attack_.

Hiccup gets knocked out a lot in this fic, which is probably a side-effect of regularly tangling with creatures that weigh a tonne or more. This time, he's out for less than he was when he was knocked out during the dragon attack when he shot down Toothless, but the impact is probably faster. Toothless does his best to slow the fall and take the blow in the way that he does several times in canon (and the shockproofing on his brain and body must be something extraordinary).

All the same, Hiccup staggers up and tries to protect Toothless because that's what he does. He has a protective streak a mile wide, and being concussed is not going to make any difference there.

Stoick's line of _"What have you done?"_ is deliberately echoing the words of the King of Arendelle in the film _Frozen_. While Hiccup is older and more able to defend himself, what he has done is much harder to explain than being a momentary accident. It's more like an accident of fate, his life taking a turn that he did not expect or pursue but which he followed anyway.

Now, the movement to put Hiccup in the jail was 100% motivated by Stoick's desire to keep Hiccup safe. At this point, Stoick is just desperate to make sure that Hiccup does not get out again. He may have heard some rumours of the mind control, or have some idea of it, and believe that Hiccup is being influenced by that. I'm genuinely not sure, to be honest. Stoick is not sure what to think that this point; I belive that I wrote the first draft of this _before_ How to Train Your Dragon 2 came out, and went and tweaked it afterwards, but it makes Stoick's side more poignant, if anything. He saw Valka defending dragons - and then she was taken. Now, Hiccup is defending dragons in turn.

Regarding the head injury and staying awake, nowadays it is not necessarily recommended for someone with a head injury to be kept awake or woken up regularly. However, it was common until recently (and, I think, is still recommended in some countries/by some health services), and in this situation, Stoick is probably being particularly cautious.

 

 

 

Fridge logic: the twins drunkenly found the bola-thrower and managed to hit Hiccup with it. This is a pretty marked difference from canon, and meant that Toothless actually got shot down twice, but it was meant to be payoff for the first use of the bola (and the twins' brief appearance in the previous chapter) and precipitate Stoick finding out about Toothless without Hiccup going into the arena and ending up calling Toothless to him that way.

Hiccup deliberately does not mention Elsa here, again to protect her and also a little bit because he does not want to get into a further argument on that front. (In that sense, Stoick is being introduced to the dragon before the wildling, when the wildling might well be the easier one to handle.)

I put in the broken wrist because Toothless is large, and strong, and probably scared and angry when they were chaining him. In the movie, the Vikings jump on in numbers in order to pin him down, but we've now seen in _Race to the Edge_ that Toothless is able to carry Hookfang as well, at least for short periods - that's four tonnes of power in those wings. It's very easy for large animals to injure even their keepers, and even if Toothless was only trying to get loose without injuring anyone it would be easy for him to accidentally hurt someone. Toothless also has not fired a single blast during this struggle, through Stoick does not mention that part. It was probably presumed that he had already reached his shot limit.

The equivalent scene to this, the argument in the Great Hall, I felt was well-played even during the original film. We could understand where Stoick was coming from, how much Stoick had not seen. In light of the second movie, however, it becomes breathtakingly beautiful and painful on Stoick's path, his fear of losing his son in the same way that he lost his wife. And honestly this isn't much of a DVD commentary at this point so much as meta/me gushing over the scene in the original movie. But the conflict here is not just between the father and the chief, but between the protective and the supportive. Unfortunately, Hiccup has not proven himself particularly open to either, and it's far easier to protect someone who doesn't want protection than it is to support someone who doesn't want support.

 

 

 

Part of the reason that Hiccup so completely does not expect help from anyone else is probably that he's spent most of the last fourteen years running solo. While Stoick and Gobber have tried to help him at times, Hiccup has still been largely independent and isolated, which can have its upsides and downsides. One of the downsides is visible here - he doesn't even think that people might want to help him, let alone plan for it. So Astrid and Elsa turning up catches him completely by surprise.

Since Hiccup and Astrid already know about Elsa's magic, that goes a way towards her being able to use her magic in front of them. I wouldn't say comfortable with using her magic, but certainly able, and given the emergency of the situation she is capable of almost compartmentalising to help break Hiccup out. At some point in the past, Elsa has learnt that extreme cold can damage iron and steel - at what point, it is not yet clear - and she immediately uses this knowledge to help get Hiccup out. Astrid is more comfortable with the breakout aspect, but seeing Elsa do magic in a deliberate way is probably still even stranger for her than it is for Hiccup. Astrid has only seen relatively large displays of magic from Elsa (in reality mid-sized in term of what Elsa is capable of, but Hiccup and Astrid actually do not know that) in the walls of ice in the cove and now with this. This is probably also the largest use of magic that Hiccup has seen so far from Elsa.

In a less desperate situation, both of them would probably need more time to process this. Instead of small things like snowflakes and ice on a walkingstick, or even the "handful" of ice she blasted towards him during the first meeting, this is large and deliberate. Once again, though, this is a case where the dragons almost override Elsa, where they are more dramatic and more difficult to deal with. Elsa is more like a human with an extra weapon - the dragons are something else altogether.

(Also, I _love_ writing magic scenes, and Elsa's ice powers have been so much fun for me in that sense. Not just this fic, but everything else in the fandom. I've always loved superheroes, mutants, and magic, and I was an absolute nightmare when I was roleplaying because I would follow things to their logical conclusion and use magic and powers in different ways. One GM assigned me a character who had previously worked for the bad guy, then mentioned in passing that all of the bad guy's followers knew how to teleport - I immediately pounced on it and realised that my character therefore knew how to teleport. Another GM gave me a character who had air element powers, and while he mostly focused on the lightning-calling aspects, I promptly started developing uses for the powers that involved affecting the weather, making sniping easier, and calling up duststorms to make it difficult to see or shoot her. Many of my favourite fics in the _Frozen_ fandom explore Elsa's powers in interesting ways, and I hope to do the same in terms of finding different ways to use Elsa's magic than appeared in the movie.)

 

 

 

Oh, Stormfly. According to the numbers on the HTTYD website, and the _School of Dragons_ , the Deadly Nadder has a speed of 8, compared to a Night Fury's 20 (or, on _School of Dragons_ , 60). But the problem is that the Hideous Zippleback is supposed to have a speed of 10, and the Monstrous Nightmare a speed of 16. So Stormfly is regularly outstripping dragons that should be able to do double her speed! In the end, I put this down to a little bit of column a, the twins and Snotlout don't push their dragons so hard so the dragons don't bother; and a little bit of column b, Astrid does push hard, Stormfly wants to impress, and Stormfly is just an unusually fast Deadly Nadder. Dreamworks, I love you, but occasionally what you say makes no sense at all.)

It's Astrid who has really persuaded the others to come and see what is happening here. Where they haven't completed their training officially, they were probably _just_ below the age of some of the fighters who went to Dragon Island - possibly only a year younger. But Astrid was almost certainly the one to round them up and bring them to the arena here, and while they _listen_ to Astrid they don't necessarily _follow_ her or treat her like a leader. But Astrid has managed to beg, borrow or steal (or, being Astrid, possibly threaten or cajole) the others for this, and makes it to the arena not long after Hiccup.

I had a really interesting discussion with a commenter about the idea of Hiccup having some sort of power of his own when it came to the dragons. At this point, it's possible that Hiccup is almost wondering the same thing - when he says that he wants to show that it's not just him that dragons won't hurt. He has his own evidence at this point - Gobber with no injuries despite years of working with them, Elsa, the presumably low-to-nonexistent death rate among the trainees in the arena every year - but it could probably be argued that all of that is circumstantial. Putting other people safely(-ish) on the backs of dragons would be a very quick way to do that, and dragons that have been around people for months or years are probably the best bet to accept that quickly.

Also, at this point, Hiccup is _tired_. He has been awake for over twenty-four hours, and probably has more chronic sleep deprivation from spending chunks of the nights, which are already short, out flying or in the cove. There's probably an element of emotional exhaustion from fighting with his father and from being separated from Toothless. And, of course, he's in pain from being shot down. So he just does not have the energy to argue right now.

The sense of urgency is also why nobody asks questions like _Who the hell is that?_ when it comes to Elsa. There's a sense that there's no time to ask questions - and Astrid briskly hurrying everyone along has probably added to that feeling. Once again, it's worth remembering that everyone knows everyone on Berk, so it's immediately clear that Elsa is an outsider and a stranger. It's their trust in Astrid, and implicitly their trust in Hiccup, which is stopping the other teens from refusing to go anything until they find out who she is. Her speaking Norse helps a lot, as does the fact that she's dressed more like a Viking (thanks to wearing second-hand Viking clothes, natch) and that she's with Astrid. When swords are drawn, in a battle situation such as this is becoming, you have to be able to trust the people in the shield-wall with you. And the other teens trust Astrid completely, already, by this point.

There was a long pause as I tried to work out which dragon it would be best to put Elsa on. Obviously Hiccup and Astrid were really the two best options at this point, but with them riding together and Stormfly probably not strong enough (or large enough) at this point to take three riders, Meatlug seemed like a sensible second choice, and to be honest if I were learning to ride a dragon, I would probably want to at least start with a Gronckle. In the same way that I'd want some experience with less powerful motorbikes before getting on a Harley. Hiccup, on the other hand, apparently went straight for the hog.


	10. Chapter 10

**As they fly towards Dragon Island, Hiccup leafs through Gobber's Book of Dragons and finds a story about a dragon called the Red Death which might just be the one he's looking for. They have not arrived in time to stop Stoick from making landfall or disturbing the Red Death, and the dragon has already set fire to some of the boats and destroyed Stoick's planned offensive. While the other teens volunteer to distract the Red Death, Hiccup goes to release Toothless from his shackles on the burning ship. They are both knocked into the sea by the Red Death's tail, but Hiccup remains with Toothless, and is on the verge of passing out when he is hauled from the water by Stoick. Stoick then goes back down, and frees Toothless. Hiccup and Toothless take to the air again, just as the Red Death hatchlings burst out; Hiccup directs the other teens to help with the fighting on the ground, while he deals with the mother Red Death. Hiccup knocks boulders down onto the Red Death, has the Monstrous Nightmare dump a ship full of water down its throat to temporarily stifle its fire, and then coaxes it into the air. On the ground, one of the hatchlings breathes fire over Elsa, but her ice protects her and forms rudimentary armour afterwards. Hiccup weaves around the Red Death, then draws it into a steep dive towards the earth, having Toothless fire into the depths of its throat to light its gas. The body of the Red Death crashes into the ground, already burning, but before Hiccup and Toothless can avoid the fireball they are struck by the tail and knocked back down into it. Hiccup is knocked unconscious again.**

 

* * *

 

Nobody in the film seems to know what the Red Death is when it appears. Of course, it's possible that it is an entirely new dragon species to the Vikings, or that there is simply such a disconnect between what they have heard about and what they see before them that they cannot put two and two together at such a time, but I chose to interpret it as being that none of the _Berk Vikings_ recognised it. Once again, Gobber's Book of Dragons being more detailed than anyone else's goes back to the notes in _We Are a Family_ ; as for Gobber not remembering them under such pressure, it is a very brief note and a very stressful situation! So I certainly do not blame Gobber for not remembering one footnote among many.

The Green Death is a dragon from the books, from whose name I believe the name 'Red Death' is taken.

The eyeglasses/spyglasses turn up a lot during the television series, to the point that they're almost a running joke. Astrid has one, Fishlegs has one, Trader Johann turns one down because he already has half a dozen that Hiccup has traded with him. They will return later in the fic as well, but this is their first appearance; they're useful things to have around.

 

 

 

As I got deeper into the fic, sticking with Hiccup's POV did have some limitations, and in ways this scene is one of them. Hiccup turns up when the first has already begun - to be honest, he practically turns up when it has already _finished_ , because the Vikings have not bought anything that could deal with the Red Death, or even really inconvenience it. So we miss the flight of what smaller dragons remain and the emergence of the Red Death. On the other hand, it does save me from having to do the scene justice!

In the film, the appearance of the Red Death is just heart-stopping. The effects are absolutely beautiful, one of the moments when you can basically forget that you're watching an animated film at all and lose yourself in the action. Here, however, we turn up in the midst of the destruction (not for the last time), and all that Hiccup sees is what the Red Death has done.

Once again, without the PG limit and in fiction, I can get away with deaths here. They are fighting a dragon the size of the mountain; I cannot honestly see a way for everyone to have escaped alive. Stoick and Gobber are implicitly agreeing to die in action in order to buy time for some sort of evacuation - I presume that there must be two landing sites, and that the Red Death has only destroyed the ships at one of them. And of course, even in the film, Hiccup almost dies. So I put it in for realism (hopefully) and to give a sense of the stakes here.

In the book series, all dragons have gills. There's this lovely concept of them being part of all four elements - earth, air, fire and water. In the second film, however, Hiccup states that Toothless will drown if he is left in the water by himself. Only the Tidal Class of dragons (Thunderdrums, Scauldrons, Seashockers and the Bewilderbeast) show signs of having gills or of spending extended periods underwater. While I guessed that most dragons would have an impressive lung capacity, and be able to hold their breath for a long time in the manner of whales and dolphins, I went with only the Tidal Class having gills (also giving a feature to tie the Tidal Class together more easily) and other dragons not.

Much as with the film, the other teens willingly throw themselves into battle. Although fighting from dragonback is never the sort of battle that they were expecting, _all of them were training to fight_. Specifically, they were training to fight dragons, and it seemed to be assumed that they already knew how to handle weapons, shields and the like. So they are trained fighters. ("Warriors", as Snotlout puts it in _Alvin and the Outcasts_ , might be reaching for impressive words, but they are definitely fighters.) So it's partially that training that feeds into their decision, partially a desire to help and protect the people on the beach, and partially trust in Hiccup and what he has showed them.

Hiccup hasn't been impressing people here in the same way that he did in the film; there aren't stories about how good he is with dragons, and people aren't flocking to eat with him in the Great Hall. But the teens specifically have watched him become very comfortable with the dragons, and then he showed them that the dragons could be ridden. Although this was very peaceful, and probably did not seem all that spectacular to Hiccup after what he has achieved with Toothless, for the other teens it must have been absolutely mind-blowing - even, to borrow from Ruffnut's vocabulary, pretty awesome.

(It has to be said, as well, flying on the back of a dragon, the creature you have been taught to respect and fear and fight for as long as you can remember, has got to be a bit of a thrill. It probably makes them feel that bit more fearless, that bit more reckless.)

The scenes of Hiccup trying to free Toothless, falling into the water, and Stoick rescuing him are pretty much expanding on canon, so I won't linger too long on them. I just focussed more on the effects of the fire, and added a touch more of Hiccup-the-smith's-apprentice.

 

> He pushed his hair out of his face as he hauled himself into the saddle, still panting and with his left arm searing hot. A hand wrapped around his wrist, and he looked down to see his father, hand bleeding and with a cut on his forehead, pain etched in his eyes.
> 
> “Hiccup,” he began softly.
> 
> “I know.”
> 
> He clasped his father’s hand for a moment, no longer feeling like his bones would be crushed beneath his father’s grip.
> 
> “You don’t have to do this.”
> 
> For a definition of _have to_... perhaps not. But there was never a question. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
> 
> Stoick squeezed, but almost tentatively. “I’m proud of you,” he said, voice rough from fire or water or something else altogether, “son.”

 

Dreamworks did an absolutely beautiful job of making this scene in the movie understated, and again I don't really think that I could match that. But I tried to do a bit of a remix, and rejig the words a little. The "I know" is a bit of a Star Wars nod, I guess, only this time with the 'I love you' also remaining unspoken. I loved the occupational hazard line for how it shows Hiccup accepting himself as a Viking, but also how it sets out that Hiccup's 'occupation' is going to be different, that he is going down his own path.

And, of course, Hiccup and Stoick's complicated, flawed, _human_ relationship entrances me. The second film shattered me, even going in having been spoiled. But for now, we are in the first film, and after fourteen years of struggle they have finally started to find a sort of peace.

 

 

 

The major change to the third act of the film is the introduction of the Red Death hatchlings. The main reason I added them was, to be honest, so that the Vikings on the beach had something to do while Hiccup and Toothless are fighting the Red Death. While it is very heartening, in the film, to see people cheering for Hiccup, after the first couple of viewings I realised that there was probably a certain frustration and awkwardness that they were not able to help. It also let me give Elsa her first moment of kickassery, and the sight of the fighter beneath the survivor.

Elsa being enveloped in fire, and then emerging in ice, is a deliberate reverse-echo of Hiccup emerging in fire from the Bewilderbeast's ice. In the film, there seems to be an instinctive reaction for her ice to protect her, when it blocks the crossbow bolt shot by one of Weselton's men. This is an extension of the same.

The armour that she creates here is not supposed to be a particularly refined copy. It is put together from vague images in her mind of how armour is supposed to look, and is probably rough around the edges, and leaves weak points. However, when fighting something as large as even the _hatchlings_ of the Red Death, weak points are probably not much of an issue - their main weapons will be fire, crushing blows, and strong bites. Against a Nadder, with the pinpoint accuracy of their spines, it would be another matter altogether. This is almost certainly the first time that Elsa done something like this, and it is mostly instinct, a general sense of what would be suitable for fighting in. The spines that she uses to kill the hatchling, however, are very deliberate, and it's likely that she's used them to hunt in the past or something similar.

Adrenaline and desperation are fuelling a lot of her magic here. Until she started to actually do the magic, most people probably did not particularly notice her, or if they did notice they did not have time to care because they were too worried about battle. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, etc. However, once the ice protects her from the fire of the dragons, the cat is completely out of the bag, and Elsa fights absolutely on instinct. She wants to protect herself, and she is pragmatic enough to see that in this situation protecting herself means killing the Red Death hatchlings. In her head, she has simply decided that she will worry about the other Berkians later.

Elsa certainly has the capacity to fight. We see that in canon, in the Ice Palace, where she fights back against Weselton's men. Her flinch away from the first crossbow bolt turns into absolute shock, and I always got the impression it was for two reasons - firstly, that her ice had protected her, but secondly that the men had fired on her in the first place. They are strangers to her, she has not hurt them, and she has left Arendelle specifically so that she will not hurt anyone (or be hurt by them, but that is probably a distant second). I am not sure that she actually considered that _people would want to kill her_ for what she can do. It [has been pointed out ](https://grrlgeek72.tumblr.com/post/99195055133/)that the picture of Joan of Arc, which appears in _Do You Want to Build a Snowman?_ , has been taken down by _First Time in Forever_. The fic [Verðug dróttning stór | Worthy Queen of Greatness,](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10714459/) by the same author, posits that Elsa had it removed because it was a reminder of what people did to 'witches'. So there may well have been some element of fear in Elsa's removal to the North Mountain. However, I honestly think that she expected that if she left, and 'took her magic with her', then people would not want to attack her. Or, at the very least, that there would be verbal warnings and anger instead of or before a move to violence. Instead, one of Weselton's men shoots straight for her chest, an attempted killing blow, and this catches her completely by surprise.

From this point, her fighting escalates quickly. Her actual blasts of ice are relatively crude at first, but her stance lowers to something more stable, and we can see that she keeps her awareness as spread around her as she can to make sure that nobody is sneaking up behind her. It is only as her anger and fear build - anger at herself for what has happened to Anna probably mixing in with anger at these strangers chasing her down and trying to kill her when she has done her best, and given up the life she knew, to protect them - that an edge of vindictiveness creeps in. She still is not sure whether she wants to kill these men, but at least part of her is considering it, and at the very least she wants to _frighten_ them, to make them feel something of the fear that she has known for so long. When Hans (of all people!) stops her, it becomes something of a moot point. But it is clear that Elsa is willing and capable of fighting even in canon, where she has been raised as Heir to the Throne. In this fic, with a very different background, that psychological capacity for fighting back will not have been treated in quite the same way, but may honestly have been more encouraged by the life that she has led.

 

 

 

The other addition is the help of the Monstrous Nightmare. Again, this was mostly just me mixing things up a bit, and making use of a bit more of what Hiccup has learnt - this time from Gobber, in the arena, and not from Toothless in the cove - to fight the Red Death. It's a pretty minor thing compared to the hatchlings, and it's mostly buying a bit of time for him to think.

The tactic of using Toothless's speed and agility to make a larger dragon crash down is one that Hiccup has used multiple times! (Red Death, the Typhoomerang in _Troublesome Twos_ , and the Screaming Death.) So I don't feel too guilty about reusing it. Other than that, the Red Death's fall - and Hiccup's - are as canon, and I think that the only detail which I added in was the gas from the dragons which the Red Death ate also igniting. This was on a whim, but does give a nice element of 'payback', and the dragons that have been eaten getting a little bit of revenge in the end.


	11. Chapter 11

**Hiccup wakes up disorientated and in pain, with Astrid and Toothless at his bedside. Astrid leaves to get Stoick, Gobber and Elsa, and in her absence Hiccup realises that his left leg has been amputated below the knee. With gaps in his memory from the concussion, Hiccup slowly pieces together what happened as he recuperates, including discovering that Elsa and the dragons have been cautiously accepted by the village for now. He meets the two hatchlings from the surviving eggs, whom Toothless gets along with, and discovers that the other teens have named their dragons.**

 

* * *

 

 

After the action of the last episode, this one is a bit of a cooldown and a consolidation. At this point, we aren't getting really big canon divergences, so even with Hiccup being knocked out at the end of last chapter I'm fairly sure that people knew he was going to pull through, minus part of his leg. So yeah, I guess that the 'reveal' of this chapter isn't too big, and I hope that it wasn't too terrible of a cliffhanger.

As another part of the balancing medical realism which I mentioned a few paragraphs ago (regarding Hiccup being knocked out as well), from this point on Hiccup is basically going to be suffering from [Post-Concussion Syndrome](http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Concussion/Pages/Complications.aspx). In canon, I believe he was unconscious or at least not aware for around two weeks, and I've read it as being posited that it was due to infection. This gave enough time for the change that we see in the village by the time that he gets outside. I've gone with a shorter time 'out', only a couple of days, simply because the longer someone is out the larger the risk of complications, and shifted some of Hiccup's symptoms to after his waking up, instead of during the unconsciousness/fever.

Sadly, pretty chief among the effects of being knocked out is amnesia. The longer someone is unconscious, the longer the period of amnesia they're likely to face. (My father was a great source of anecdotes to this, thanks to his hobby of getting silly injuries for the first twenty-five years or so of his life; I have been unconscious a few times, only once due to a blow to the head, and I only lost a few minutes, maybe as much as half an hour, leading up to the fall from the climbing frame in question.) So yeah, Hiccup has lost most of his memories of his derring-do from the previous chapter. Sorry, Hiccup! At least this time everyone else saw it, so there's definitely proof; I suppose that makes it the opposite of when he shot Toothless down!

The shorter period of time means that people are still on their way back from Dragon Island at this point. Considering the Red Death destroyed a large number of the boats, and the priority would be getting the most badly-injured back to Berk where Gothi could treat them, I figured that people would have had to come back in stages. So the uninjured and stable are going to be the last ones back, but Stoick, as Chief, still needs to see them in. It's another side of the clash between the father that wants to be with his son and the Chief who needs to be there for his people.

I had been waiting quite a while to use the phrase "limb-to-person ratio", I'm not going to lie, because it just sounded like something that Hiccup would come out with. The pragmatic approach of Berk to amputation and physical disability generally is marvellous, and really quite refreshing. There also seems to be quite a prevalence of 'crip humor' - humor between physically disabled people about being physically disabled. (I am not sure whether it extends to mental disability or not and thus will not comment on that side of the issues.) I read a lot of blogs, webcomics and even reddit threads about living with disabilities to get a feel for how to write a social setting where physical disability is very normalised and accepted, and I hope that it works. Growing up in Berk, and particularly with Gobber around, Hiccup sees physical disability as completely normal, so while it takes some getting used to for him, it's not as psychologically affecting as it might be in our 'real world'. It's an adjustment, but one that Hiccup can totally handle.

(The foot jokes in the TV series and the second film give me life, I swear. Not just Hiccup, but seeing some of the others reacting to the foot, is great. Ruffnut, in _Free Scauldy_ , has no problem with saying "My leg fell off. All the dragons are my friends.", while Hiccup merely corrects her that his leg did not _fall_ off. Interestingly, it's Snotlout who seems to have the biggest problem getting used to Hiccup's prosthetic; in _Defiant One_ he has a whole rant about "the metal leg". It's great to see, by _When Darkness Falls_ , that he is so comfortable with the metal leg that he is willing to try to grab it and use it as a weapon. (To be fair, Hiccup has also done this before.) It really shows character growth from Snotlout. It's also worth noting that in _Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Man_ , the prosthetic foot is still in place on the 'idealised' Hiccup - that's no problem for Berk. The muscularity, or lack thereof, is what gets people.)

I did not, however, give Hiccup his prosthetic straight away. Again, this is a case of trying to apply at least some medical realism. In the first few weeks after an amputation, the shape of the end of the limb changes shape, risks infection, and is still quite tender. It's just not possible to put on a prosthetic too early. So it's going to be a while before Hiccup gets that foot 'back'.

 

 

 

There's a lot that goes on in this first post-Red Death chapter, partially because it's catching up a couple of days, and partially because there's a lot of (relatively little and non-exciting) things that have happened in those days.

First, Hiccup's injury. I mentioned that previously. Once he was stable, he's not going to be get special treatment from Gothi, who would have been needed for other injuries. Watch and wait, until he woke up.

Secondly, Toothless and the other dragons have at least a level of tolerance from people for helping to defeat the Red Death. Without spoiling too much, it's going to be more complicated than the movie, but the dragons are definitely around now. This is directly related to the fact that the dragons fought with them, and is one of the reasons that I had the Monstrous Nightmare and the boat full of water, to involve dragons other than Toothless.

Thirdly, of course, has been Elsa. Hiccup was not really there for the moment that Elsa was introduced to the village - a lot of them will have noticed her during the fighting, and the explosion of ice. Any stranger in Berk is going to get noticed, but prior to the ice nobody was too attentive because they were more focused on the dragons trying to kill them. The reveal of her magic will have caused some consternation. The 'missing scene' fic _Blood Sister_ fills in a little bit of what happened, and Gobber explains more; there were a core few who stood up for her. That she acted very 'human', spoke some Northur, and had been fighting against the dragons will also have been in her favour. While Hiccup was able to see Elsa as human before any of those changes, some people in Berk would have more difficulty. So Hiccup has helped to 'translate' for her even in that sense.

Elsa is, indeed, now in Hiccup's workshop. His workshop, in canon, is a room in the back of the smithy, but I moved it to the house specifically so that Elsa would have somewhere to move in.

Stormfly's name appears from the TV series, and is taken from a different dragon in the books. All of the dragons actually get named in the TV series, which I also love. They get some real personality as well. I have no idea if the book Stormfly has a backstory to her name, but I thought that it fitting our one to have a tale. Astrid really takes Stormfly on as her sister-in-arms, like equals in battle, so it made sense to me that she'd gain a name quickly.

 

 

 

Gobber seems to have had the sort of action-filled life where he's probably been concussed himself a few times, never mind seen other people who are. There's a cut line, recorded by Craig Ferguson, where Gobber cheerily goes, "But the important thing is, you've lost your first limb". (I believe I saw this on one of the extra features for the DVD, but it's stuck with me.) Gobber approaches everything with a vague optimism and a certainty that they'll find some way to deal with things. As a double amputee, he still does well for himself.

I also love Gobber's way of speaking. It reminds me an awful lot of some branches of my family, not least the Scottish part. So it was fun to take the opportunity for a Gobber-style summary of everything that had happened.

There is also a touch of what Gobber is going through inside - his reference to the eggs. While Hiccup had to come to terms with shooting Toothless down, as he stated in an early chapter, everyone on Berk over a certain age has killed dragons. Accepting that dragons are not bad or evil means accepting that they have done a lot of bad things, and even if it's going on inside, Gobber is facing a little of that. So he does appreciate Hiccup's reassurance here, even if he breezily carries on with conversation.

 

 

 

There's a certain amount of domestic detail which made it into these fics, not least in terms of the food in the background. Once you've been hungry, or lived closer to the subsistence line, it's very easy to find yourself aware of food, on a low-level basis, pretty much _all the time_. So food references got liberally added throughout this fic, and there's a lot more of the characters eating, talking and eating, or thinking about eating, than there is in canon.

 

 

 

The Gronckle hatchlings are basically a cross between puppies and kittens. In _Gift of the Night Fury_ , they are all absolutely adorable, but I found the Gronckles particularly cute because they look like they're in the roly-poly stage that kittens and puppies go through at about 3-5 weeks. Newly hatched reptiles tend to be pretty independant, with relatively few species having the mothers stick around, but the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon do seem to have stronger, and longer, maternal ties (the Typhoomering mother, and the Whispering Death mother of the Screaming Death). So I let the dragons be a bit more helpless at first, grow up more slowly, and stick around with their mothers for rather longer.

But in any case, yeah, Gronckle hatchlings are basically puppies-crossed-with-kittens. I worked in a shelter for a while, and we were always getting kittens in, either by themselves or because we had pregnant female cats coming in. Around this time, a friend of mine was also raising bottle babies, and watching them interact with adult cats could be the funniest thing. They're just at the age where they're starting to do something other than sleep and eat - where their eyes are open, they'll be showing immediate interest in the world around things, probably trying to eat things that they shouldn't eat, and climbing on things they aren't big enough to climb on. Hiccup has a definite point with the soothing-ness, though: it really is amazing how calm a furry animal of any variety (cat, dog, guinea pig, rabbit, rat) can be.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is totally a thing I was working on. Sorry about that.

**Hiccup continues to recover, helps Gobber to plan Toothless's new tail, and watches the Gronckle hatchlings develop. Hearing shouting outside, Hiccup looks out of his window to see a crowd threatening Stormfly and Astrid defending her. He gets hold of a set of crutches and goes to defend Stormfly as well, successfully sending everyone away. When Stoick comes to see what the commotion was about, Hiccup changes the subject to the Silver Priests, and Stoick takes Hiccup and Elsa aside to hear Elsa's story. When she is finished, she goes gathering food with Gobber, while Stoick and Hiccup discuss the political implications of her story.**

 

* * *

 

 

Gothi is awesome. Taking no bullshit, and not afraid to let her annoyance show, I love her to bits. I'll be fair, I often have a soft spot for little old lady characters, and when I worked in retail I did have something of a habit of finding ways to give discounts to them! (I blame being raised by my grandparents.) I was delighted to see her back in _Race to the Edge_ , let alone getting in some of the best lines and getting some backstory! I also love that despite not speaking, she gets some of the best 'lines', and her interactions with people are always fun and colourful. In the context of this fic, I guess that she's also another of those individuals whose words are translated through others, something which goes on with various people here.

Also more of the medical semi-realism here. In the real world, from the resources I could find, amputees often start off with a walker rather than crutches because it doesn't put so much pressure on the underarms. However, this wouldn't be so available in Berk, so for Hiccup the crutches are a very immediate idea of freedom. Other than the leg, and the post-concussion syndrome, Hiccup's other injuries are pretty minor and healed up quickly - but in some ways this can be more frustrating, because it leaves you in bed with your mind going at a normal speed but nothing to occupy yourself with but what you can persuade other people to bring to you. (Although I can't say that I was ever lucky enough to have dragon hatchlings in a post-injury resting period.)

While we get to see Hiccup geek out with Fishlegs in the TV series, we don't really get to see him have any blacksmith geek outs with Gobber apart from over Gronckle iron. So I was delighted to put in those scenes. As for Elsa, she is indeed listening for the vocabulary and grammar - as Northur is Old Norse-ish, the grammar will be different from Finnish-ish Marulosen - as being in Berk is essentially her immersion into the language. But the part that she won't mention aloud is probably that she also likes seeing Hiccup and Gobber interacting, with the feeling of family; it's a pleasant scene for her to see as well.

 

 

 

The dragons in this fic do grow more slowly than the ones in the TV series, simply because the rates of growth for some of them seemed impossible to me. So their rate is maybe a little more like crocodiles and large snakes; a dragon the size of Toothless, Stormfly or Meatlug would probably reach sexual maturity at 6-8, and their full size in their early teens. This links in with the fact that Toothless continues growing a little between the two films, and that Valka comments that he is about Hiccup's age. A larger dragon like Hookfang or Barf and Belch would therefore actually be a little older (despite Hookfang's behaviour!).

The only children thing is another worldbuilding note for a preindustrial society, as I previously mentioned. The twins are, well, the  _twins_ , and Snotlout's younger sister Adelaide comes from the books although I will freely admit to knowing nothing about her but her name.

Once again, Fishlegs's mother's crab cakes make an appearance. I tried to resist the temptation to make them too much of a running joke.

> _“Fifteen, twenty years ago,” he said, “there were a lot of dragon attacks. It’s all in my mother’s journal, actually – I have to show you those,” he added to Fishlegs. “Mine too. It’s got information about the dragon attacks going back years. But anyway, they were taking more food, more sheep, more fish,” he took a deep breath; “some people say that children got taken. It passed, in time, but people still remember it.”_

This is again something which was more built into the journals, but ended up not appearing too much. The idea behind this increased incidence of attacks was that the eggs of the Red Death have been incubating that long, essentially, whether ovoviviparous or simply egg-laying it has taken that long for them to develop. While the eggs were being formed, the female needed increased food - hence more attacks. But it ended up not being possible to explain this within the confines of the story, so it was just a part of Berk's history in the end.

If there was going to be someone threatening an entire armed gang, I figured that it would be Astrid. Stormfly is also smaller than Hookfang or Barf and Belch, and easier to get to than Meatlug or Toothless who are largely at Stoick/Hiccup's house. This is also a very early, lashing-out sort of anger, as the deaths caused by the Red Death are still only days ago. 

Hiccup has always seemed to me like the sort of person that would be trying to run before he can walk, which is a worryingly apt metaphor when it comes to his foot right now. His snap at Fishlegs is a little bit from his post-concussion syndrome, which can exacerbate some emotions and reactions, but also because Hiccup has shown that he can react more sternly in emotional situations.

The pop that someone takes at the Hoffersons relates again to the events from  _Fright of Passage_ and the humiliation of the family by the death of Finn Hofferson. 

Hoark the Haggard is a canonical character - he's the one that cheerily shouts "Morning!" at Hiccup during the opening sequence. The rest of the characters here are OCs, simply because I needed more named people against the dragons. Hiccup's lines did not seem to work so well without names among them, either in dialogue or description; he needs to know these people, like he would know everyone in a village as small as Berk, for the impact.

You also see a little bit of difference in the reactions of those who are against the dragons. Some of them just want to see the dragons on their way, and live separately to them, while others are actively looking to kill them. I figured that there would be a range of responses at this point, with a lot of them being very personal in nature.

Hiccup stepping up as the chief's son is another thing that happens as this fic goes on. In the setting of the first movie, although the chief was his father, there wasn't the feeling of Hiccup being treated as an heir (although we find out in the TV series that Berk does follow a hereditary system). His use of the position here is one part accepting the responsibility and one part pulling rank, to be fair, as a way of ending the fight without the use of weapons. It's also an example of using his brain, in that sense, instead of brawn.

 

 

 

Elsa's recap of her story to Stoick is also a chance for the reader to get a full recap, in a sense. This is also the first time that there are explicitly revealed to be four trials, one for each (classical) element. However, it is more of a lead in to Hiccup and Stoick's discussion. Again, this is Hiccup in the role of chief's heir (not just chief's son), this time being thrust upon him rather than chosen, but it also starts to let me develop the worldbuilding of Berk's history and interaction with Arendelle.

Putting them at far ends of the same island allowed me to move Elsa through as the story needed, but it did leave me with two very disparate lands rather close to each other. Of course, I figured that they would have a history of interaction; the treaty, as inspired somewhat by the treaty that Berk has with the Berserkers in the TV series, is the current state of events. Having existed for longer than the one with the Berserkers, it is renewed less often; I pictured Arendelle and Berk as having reached a long-term peace largely because they are so different that they do not much want to interact. It probably helps that Berk does not seem to be one for raiding; they probably have enough trouble with the dragons without going looking for more fights!

However, this peace is also based on having a common enemy: wildlings, the only group on the island who use magic. Hiccup had not previously thought about how deep the consequences of Elsa's accusation were, because he is focused on her and because of his political inexperience. He is 14! However, Stoick, at 45, is far more aware of the political implications. This political side is essential the slow build plot of the fic, hence only appearing 12 chapters in!

Here we also learn more about the King and Queen of Arendelle in this universe. The 'lost heir' plotline is perhaps a little similar to Tangled, but it's not deliberately borrowed. Arendelle is also markedly more politically closed-off than Corona, which seems to be open and functioning normally. This isolation has gone on for at least two generations in Stoick's memory (he remembers the King before last), but actually goes back a lot further. Arendelle is just an isolationist kingdom, here. 

And finally, we once again get Hiccup's frustration and anger made worse by the post-concussion.

 

 

 

The big takeaways from this chapter are probably the spectrum of feelings towards dragons among Berk residents (Hiccup being one end, down to those who would want to keep killing dragons), and the political impact of what Elsa said. Everything until now has been very much about Hiccup, Toothless and Elsa, but slowly things are going to start rippling out from here. First is the effect on the other riders, which has already taken place; now the ripples are moving on to Berk in general.

The worldbuilding is also moving out as well. The Arendelle of this fic is not identical to the Arendelle of the film; it is the Berk setting that I have (almost) entirely preserved, and Arendelle has been changed slightly to fit it. An isolationist Kingdom, cut off from its southerly cultural neighbours, it maintains peace with Berk and generally does not deal with other Vikings. The last King and Queen - now deceased, with a new Queen Apparent known but not yet crowned - were particularly withdrawn, having lost one of their children to kidnapping. However, the reveal that they are the reason for the wildlings, rather than fighting them as they have claimed to Berk, indicates that the Silver Priests have a strong political as well as cultural hold.


	13. Chapter 13

**Hiccup discovers that he has earnt the nickname "dragon master". He shows Astrid how to control Toothless's tail, but they land quickly when they spot someone being aggressive to Elsa. Hiccup's attempts to turn the man away only have limited success, until Stoick arrives and orders the man to back down. Steering Hiccup away, Stoick tells him off for getting into fights, but Hiccup protests and they end up arguing. In the middle of their argument, Hiccup falls over, re-injuring his left leg. Elsa freezes the wound to stop it bleeding.**

 

* * *

 

 

I wrote this chapter around the time that I saw HTTYD2, which as far as I'm aware is where the term "Dragon master" is first used (Astrid describes Hiccup as "the greatest Dragon Master this world has ever known" when talking to Drago), but I don't think it was a phrase that I consciously took away from that movie. But it was probably a thing in fandom even before that, and the term 'master' by itself does appear occasionally as early as Riders of Berk. Hiccup's particular nod to Elsa to not call him that is a reference to her memory, of which he is increasingly aware, as well as the fact that he has now seen the occasional moment of gentle teasing from her. (Her not helping here could indeed be a method of teasing in and of itself.)

Piglegs and Gustav are canon characters, while the little girl with the stuffed lamb appears on a couple of occasions but is most notable in  _Alvin and the Outcasts_. Her name is made up, and the other children that we see are OCs. The scene with the children here was partially meant to show that children are more open to the idea of befriending dragons - children tend not to have the ingrained prejudices that adults have, and in this case there's extra pressure on the adults because they have already killed dragons. Also, there is a tendency for kids to love things that are 'cool' - and dragons would certainly fall into that category as big reptiles with wings and powerful muscles and the ability to breathe fire. So both the openness of kids, and the fact that dragons are awesome.

In canon, various people end up being able to fly Toothless, but as far as I'm aware Stoick is the first, in  _How to Pick Your Dragon_. Because I'm keeping Hiccup on crutches for longer, it seemed mean to keep Toothless unable to fly for that long, so I had one of the other riders - Astrid - step up.

It also gave a chance for Astrid to reflect on what she has done to dragons in the past. Although she hasn't killed, she's probably gone almost to the brink: she's injured dragons, knocked Barf and Belch unconscious to render them vulnerable, and she was absolutely ready to kill Hookfang. In a sense, she's lucky that she didn't cross that line, and she's probably aware of that. There's also a nod to the poor treatment which Stormfly and the other dragons faced prior to the recent events, although in a different cultural setting they aren't going to completely discuss what happens and the frank cruelty that it entailed. 

Bloodbeard is a total OC. There simply weren't enough antagonistic figures in canon, so I had to put one together, and although Toothless is very visibly  _different_ and dragons are something that everyone has fought, it seemed unbelievable that there would be no objection to a magic-user in Berk. Most people were accepting enough of having Elsa around so long as she was escorted and did not use her magic, almost like a form of bail. But obviously, again, there were going to be some differences of opinion.

I deliberately gave Bloodsocks a reason to be angry. Twice in my life I have had to tell someone that their child is dead, and it is something that I would never want to repeat. Although child mortality was high in pre-industrial periods, if someone made it to adulthood they had a relatively good chance of making it to middle age or further; people might know that they were going to lose children, but once those children came to adulthood it would be a different matter. Moreover, this was not to illness or accident: a death by dragon looks very preventable, if only the dragon had been killed first. Hiccup is preventing those deaths another way, by preventing the fighting, but of course there will be some resentment from those whose family's or friends' deaths were not prevented. It was also, at this point, only a couple of weeks ago that Bloodsocks's son had died - hardly a time for rational behaviour. So although he's an antagonist here, I wanted him to be one whose reasons for hating dragons and wildlings were perhaps a little more understandable, and specific, than some of the others that we see.

Both Toothless and Elsa experience depersonalisation (in Elsa's case, dehumanisation) in the way that people talk about them. Toothless gets called "it" a lot; in this case, Bloodsocks called Elsa "that". In this case, it is probably deliberate by Bloodsocks; he is underlining the perceived difference between 'normal people' and those who have magic. With Toothless, it's usually subconscious. It's a nasty move, though, and probably resonates more with Elsa because Marulosen strictly separates animate and inanimate objects. (This hasn't come up in canon at this point, but we see more of Marulosen in the next fic.)

 

 

 

I really love Stoick. I love how the film gave him depth and nuance; listening to the commentary is great because they talk about how Gerard Butler (Stoick) and Craig Ferguson (Gobber), who were already old friends, got together to discuss characterisation and the like. At this moment, Stoick is also only a couple of weeks from almost losing his only son - twice over. He almost lost Hiccup through irrevocable argument, and then almost lost him to the Red Death. Hiccup lost his foot, and will carry that scar for the rest of his life. This will weigh on Stoick.

So, in a way, this argument is more about Stoick than Hiccup. Hiccup has thrown himself into talking for the dragons, and that is amazing, but Stoick is the one dealing with a lot of the fallout. Mishandling could quite possibly result in the Berkian equivalent of a civil war, and/or Stoick being challenged as Chief. If that were to happen, Stoick would either have to surrender or to physically fight for his position, something which he doubtless does not want to do. Considering Stoick also talked happily in canon about what it was like to kill dragons, he's dealing with the same guilt as everyone else. He's trying to keep a lid on a very complex situation, and just about succeeding.

> _“You’re telling anyone who will listen not just that we do not need to fight the dragons, but that we never needed to fight them at all.” The words made Hiccup’s protests die on his lips. “You walk up to people and say that people never needed to have died. You tell me that your mother never–”_

The sad part is that this is right. Following the logic back, if the war had been prevented then hundreds of lives could be saved. (Stoick says, in canon, "They've killed hundreds of us".) Having watched HTTYD2, I knew Valka's story at this point, and it made Stoick's actions at the end of HTTYD all the more poignant. Stoick is realising how many of the deaths he has seen were unnecessary (that his son's disability was unnecessary). The last thing he wants right now is Hiccup thrusting that into people's faces.

Just as the argument is getting nastier, Hiccup slips and falls. This is something that is warned about on basically every website and piece of information for people recovering from surgery for amputation, or getting used to living with amputation. Hiccup has had a major surgical intervention, was lucky to survive it, and almost certainly lost quite a lot of blood. There was a reason he was supposed to stay in bed!

And yes, Astrid, Elsa and Toothless all disobeyed Stoick to lurk not that far outside. Toothless has the best hearing, which is why he is the first on the scene, but the others naturally follow him. Hiccup experiences both phantom pain and another moment of disorientation from his post-concussion syndrome, but the major thing that he's managed to do is tear open some of the stitches on his stump.

Elsa heals the wound as she did for Toothless's tail, as she has probably done for her own wounds in the past in places that she can't reach them to bandage. It is only intended to be temporary, until Astrid brings Gothi back, and Elsa knows that the ice should withdraw once she puts her bracelets back on. In this case, I guess it's worth almost distinguishing between the force of Elsa's magic and the ice which is formed. Elsa freezes the blood into ice in order to form a sort of scab over the skin. Her actual magic does not penetrate Hiccup's flesh - hence there is no danger of him being hurt by it, as Anna is in canon.

In her fight against Weselton's bodyguards, in Frozen, we get the clearest view of Elsa deliberately using her magic:

There is a clear blue light that seems to  _become_ the ice; I read this as the ice being a solid thing and not dangerous to touch in the way that her magic is. The bodyguards fight against the ice, tussle with it, etc, but it reacts like normal ice. In contrast, when Elsa's magic strikes Anna, it is the light which strikes her.

This might seem like a weird distinction, but it's one that I've used in this fic to explain how Elsa's ice does not hurt people. The blue light is the dangerous part - the ice itself is not.

Her  _choice_ to use her magic on Hiccup is perhaps a more unusual one, as it's the first time she's used the ice on another human being. Only Hiccup and Stoick are present to see (Astrid and Gothi may well see it when they return); it is not completely public. Her fear for Hiccup - she does not know much about medicine, does not know how bad the bleeding is likely to become, but does not want him to suffer further marked blood loss - overrules her usual feeling that her ice is somehow shameful. She knows her magic is dangerous, but that this specific thing - forming an icy scab over wounds - is safe because she has tested it first on herself and then on Toothless. Where she knows the action is safe, it would be shame and fear of being caught which would normally stop her, and her concern for Hiccup is more powerful than those in this case.


	14. Chapter 14

**Hiccup is forced to rest until the village meeting that is to decide whether the dragons and Elsa are to be allowed to remain in Berk. He attends the meeting, where Stoick lays out the facts and leaves people to debate. There is some discussion and dissent, notably from Mildew, but eventually the majority decide to accept them all.**

 

* * *

 

 

Ever been stuck in bed with your mind totally active? It's infuriating. When I was fourteen, I injured my back and was stuck in bed for several days; I drafted a good chuck of a novella and ended up learning the first canto of  _The Lay of Leithian_ by Tolkien. (I can still recite it to this day.) Making it an exchange for going to the village meeting probably helps a little, though by how much I'm not sure!

This scene of putting it to everyone was, to an extent, inspired by  _Nation_ by Terry Pratchett. 

> _Daphne tried to make out what was said next, but people all started talking at once, and because everyone was talking at once, everyone started talking louder. But something was happening. Little conversations got bigger, and then were picked up and rolled from tongue to tongue around the circle. Whatever the result was going to be, she thought, it probably was not going to be one simple word. Then Pilu wandered around the circle, hunkering down here and there, joining in for a little while, and then strolling on to another point and doing the same thing again._
> 
> _No one stuck up there hands and there was no voting, but she thought, I wonder if it was like this in ancient Athens? This is pure democracy. People don't just get a vote, they have a say..._

I first read  _Nation_ many years ago now, but the image has stuck with me all the same, of people discussing their way to a conclusion rather than just voting to one. (Of course, I'm writing this DVD commentary right after the Brexit debacle, which has given me an even more jaded political outlook, but there you go! It's just made this more interesting to read back.)

No, the twins do not really have a psychic link, Ruff is just winding up Tuff. It felt like something they would do.

The Barbarous Isles are, I believe, a name which I made up but which hopefully fits with the overall HTTYD universe. And yes, Ruffnut was probably about to say exactly what the reader and Hiccup were thinking: they eat Gronckle kebab, essentially.

Snotlout, on the other hand... not only do I not apologise for him, I fear he is beyond apologising for. I dread to think what it really would take to start to chafe through too much masturbation, but there you go.

Spitelout calls Hookfang "the lizard" in  _Race to Fireworm Island_ from Defenders of Berk. Here, he is using the term in a slightly more positive way, not quite as a pet name but as an indication, at least, that he is not seeing Hookfang as a dangerous brute.

On a more serious worldbuilding note, I think this is the first time that I set up the idea that the killing of a dragon is the initiation to adulthood in Berkian society. Among historical Viking societies, children generally became adults at twelve, when they were given an armband and could swear oaths like any other adult. At the beginning of the first film, there was a definite feeling of the teenagers being children, although they were about fourteen. Maybe societies have had something which is more of an initiation ceremony than just reaching a certain age, so I borrowed that for Berk; being isolated from even the other Viking islands, and having a greater dragon presence, has shifted their culture over three hundred years or so.

> _"We’ve had one gap of fourteen days between attacks, six years ago, and if you want me to show you the records I will but we’ll be here all night, so I don’t recommend it."_

The 'records' to which Hiccup is referring here are his mother's journals and his own, although he's giving them a somewhat grander name.

Otherwise, the argument probably doesn't need that much commentary! This was wrapping up various things from the Red Death arc, and getting us closer to the stage that we're at by the end of the first film, where dragons are living more comfortably within Berk.


	15. Chapter 15

**Stoick and Gobber are concerned when Elsa is not in her room, but she is found sleeping under Toothless's wing. Stoick points out that it is not appropriate for Hiccup to be sharing his room with a woman, even as Hiccup protests that it has only been the once and they were on far sides of the room anyway. Escaping, Hiccup meets up with the others at the arena, where he is told the names of the other dragons and starts to teach the others what he has learnt. He also explains how he met Elsa and Toothless over lunch. As the weather worsens, they head home, with Astrid prompting Hiccup to fly instead of walking.**

 

* * *

 

 

A much more light-hearted chapter now, as we're sort of getting into the long stretch towards the end of this fic!

The original idea from this, which ashleybenlove and I bounced back and forth, was about _Hiccup_ sleeping under Toothless's wing (canon would later show that he doesn't, and instead sleeps draped over Toothless in absurd ways), but got extended to Elsa because we thought that would be cute as well. Elsa probably has memories of sharing a bed with her sister when she was a child - unllike Hiccup, an only child - and they were sharing the cave during the summer. Considering that Elsa is probably experiencing some level of touch starvation, and that she is not comfortable being in physical contact with humans, it seemed pretty understandable that she would get more physically comfortable with Toothless, seek him out for contact, and quite possibly end up sleeping next to him. All it takes then is for Toothless to extend a wing, and the sleeping-under-the-wing is born.

And if sleeping beside a huge dog is warm and comforting (I grew up with dogs bigger than I was; you get used to it being the dog's house more than it is yours) then sleeping next to an even larger dragon can only be more so.

 

 

 

As Hiccup points out, Stoick is overreacting. Most likely, Stoick does not believe for a moment that anything untoward is going on - what he's worried about is that it might appear to  _others_ that something untoward is going on. Going into the TV series, it was made clear that Berk works on hereditary succession, and that Hiccup would be expected to inherit. (This is not so clear in the first film.) It actually varied among Viking societies whether leadership was inherited, chosen by other members of the society, or claimed by the sword; perhaps this is not too surprising, as 'Viking' covers several centuries and various countries. But as soon as hereditary succession comes into play, it does become important who the chief's descendants are - which means keeping track of those descendants' sexual activity. Sorry, Hiccup! So Stoick is mostly making Hiccup aware that he has to watch his reputation - though there might also be the sliver of warning  _just in case_ there is something going on after all.

(Again, sorry, Hiccup. ashleybenlove and I just found the idea of Stoick worrying about this hilarious, considering that so far Hiccup has managed exactly two kisses on the cheek. Receiving, not even initiating.)

Compared to that, escaping to the arena is more than a little of a relief. The swapping of information is more or less a 'missing scene'. The names of all of the dragons come from the TV series, where they are established from the beginning, and dragon nip is the grass which Toothless rolls in during the learning montage of the first film. The name is confirmed through  _School of Dragons_ and, again, in the series.

Since Elsa has been escorted pretty much everywhere since the Red Death, her social circle has been at least as limited as his. So she knows Fishlegs and Astrid, but has not met the twins or Snotlout before this point (considering her first impression on them was the fight against the Red Death, that probably was a rather dramatic reveal). The exuberance, physicality and general behaviour of the twins in particular, and Snotlout to a fair extent, make them really something else to deal with, very full-on and difficult to handle. Between that and missing parts of the conversation that the others have, Elsa is very much a fish out of water here, and does pretty well in being able to handle it all.

 

 

 

Most of what the other dragon riders come out with is are not canonical, apart from the Monstrous Nightmare's flammable saliva as explained in Riders of Berk ( _The Heather Report_ , but it becomes very important later in canon) and the Gronckles reacting badly to limestone ( _In Dragons We Trust_ ). Obviously, the hawking up of fish is also canon, although we never see anyone other than Hiccup get to react to it for the first time! By the time that we see Hookfang throwing up fish, Snotlout casually eats it.

For the made-up parts, I gave Nadders dustbaths because they are the most bird-like, and presumed that a Zippleback would get 'jointly' drunk because I figured that they shared a stomach and circulatory system, albeit with two tracheas. SImilarly, the Nadders going after shiny things was a bird-like one; magpies and corvids, among the smartest of birds, are the ones that go after shiny things. So in a sense, it's something of a compliment!


	16. Chapter 16

**Astrid and Hiccup go flying, and Hiccup restates that he sees Elsa as a sister. They return home, where Toothless noses in the fire and Hiccup asks Gobber if he can help design his own prosthetic. They discuss food over dinner, and afterwards Hiccup talks to Elsa about how Stoick disapproves of her being in his room. In the following days, some of the dissenters leave Berk, with a promise of silence, Hiccup and Astrid talk about what it means to be normal, and Hiccup learns that the Gronckle hatchlings have been given names.**

 

* * *

 

 

The flying scene here is something of a nod to Romantic Flight from the first film, as although Hiccup and Astrid did go flying in this fic it was not particularly 'on-screen'. However, unlike the largely conversation-free (screaming does not, I fear, count as conversation) Romantic Flight, I wanted to give them a chance to talk, and to build on what they've been through together over the past few weeks.

With how northerly Berk is, the nights really would have been short over the summer! Although I've kept it considerably below the Arctic Circle, at the height of summer the nights probably still would have been about six hours long, or maybe a little shorter. Giddy with youth and excitement, Hiccup has been largely ignoring his sleep deprivation. It also gave the chance for Hiccup to very firmly let  _Astrid_ know that he is not romantically interested in Elsa; I'm not a fan of misunderstanding or jealousy plots (the Vicar of Dibley gets a pass on this) and if I'm honest, I wanted to give as many signals to the audience as well that this particular fic was not going to be Hiccelsa. I love found family, especially when it's a sort of combination of blood family and found family, and growing up as an only child I did experience what I think many only children do - there were times when I wished that I had a sibling. There were also times that I was glad that I didn't (!), but there were definitely times that I wished for one.

I think it's widespread knowledge now that Toothless was partially inspired by one of the animators acquiring a cat and discovering that they were a cat person. I've known a few cats that allowed themselves to be owned by humans, but I've known rather more that owned the humans instead. But in many cases, it was mutual, which was actually how I see Hiccup and Toothless.

 

 

 

Hiccup's flippant mouth and sarcastic language comes and goes in the show, largely with his mood and how serious the tone of the episodes is, but I couldn't resist it here. Gobber's backstory in this series is mostly from what we knew as of the time of Riders and Defenders of Berk, in particular the memorable line that Stoick gives as an explanation of the first thing he said to Gobber:

> _"That's my wife you're talking to, you one-legged lout!"_ _\- Stoick, How to Pick Your Dragon_

Certainly a memorable introduction! Later material for the series has basically indicated that this was a joke line and is not canon for how the writers consider Gobber and Stoick's backstory to go, but by then I'd already wrestled my timeline into place. So for this fic, Gobber and Stoick met very shortly after Stoick was married, when Valka was 16, Stoick was 26 and Gobber was 31. So that left me with plenty of pre-Berk background to play with, with only an indication from  _Book of Dragons_ that Gobber and his family had travelled for a while in his youth.

> _“Oh, get down, you slavering fiend.” Gobber pushed Toothless down again, soft-palmed. “I don’t fancy a flammable chin.”_

It was a sign of affection in my family - and still is with me and my cats - to call our pets fiend, hound, monster, beast, and other playful terms. I felt it was particularly interesting here since not that long ago the word  _fiend_ would have been used genuinely, as a denigration rather than a pet name.

I mentioned Gobber's comment about the lack of horn as a footnote on the chapter itself, but I'll repeat here:

> _The note about Toothless being the only dragon without a horn comes from additional material on the HTTYD DVD. He was deliberately designed that way, to make him look different from the other dragons._

There are only seven species of dragons seen in the first film (Deadly Nadder, Gronckle, Hideous Zippleback, Monstrous Nightmare, Night Fury, Red Death, Terrible Terror) although there are others seen in the Book of Dragons while Hiccup is flicking through it. At the time that I posted this chapter, season two of Race to the Edge was the most recent installment of canon; at the time that I write this commentary, season three of Race to the Edge has aired. Since writing this fic, I have created a [spreadsheet of dragons](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cuXOft604QCd3hdt4TG7cZC52aqGtWB6TtrL4i-7nCw/edit) appearing in the HTTYD universe - the movies/TV series, the books (from "The Incomplete Book of Dragons - Cressida Cowell") and games. Although my games page is woefully out of date, I have been keeping up with the TV series.

At the time that I posted the chapter, someone quite smartly asked whether the lack of horn being unique to Toothless remained true with the new dragons. My response was to look at pictures, with this result:

> I'm not sure whether the Snaptrappers have horns or... tendrils? coming out of the backs of their heads, and the Seashocker's seems to have developed into the very pointed nose instead? And with some the Gronckle related-species or subspecies or whatever they are, they seem to be pretty dulled/underdeveloped (Hotburples and the Catastrophic Quaken). I might handwave it as being Gobber's experience, though!

Having seen Grump in more detail, it does seem that the rhinal horn is extremely underdeveloped, looking more like a bump. Into season three of Race to the Edge, we also see the Cavern Crasher (a pointed nose similar to that of the Seashocker), Grimora (which may or may not be a species of dragon, but I include them out of interest and because they are clearly part of a dragon-related ecosystem)  and possibly the Eruptodon although there are not many high-quality images at this time. So it seems that over time, Toothless is no longer the most unusual-looking dragon, and it is becoming clear that dragons come in more of a range than Berk has experienced. So I'm definitely going to have to handwave this as being Gobber's experience with dragons at this point.

And, finally, we return to Hiccup and Gobber nerding out over blacksmithing, this time with a prosthetic focus. I love these two, I really do.

 

 

 

The Svenson-Odergard marriage takes place in  _Viking For Hire_ , in the spring of Berk, so I extrapolated that the contract - the official sign of their betrothal - would have been some months earlier. I believe that the canon subtitles are Odergard, but before discovering this I thought that Odourgard would fit with Berk's naming patterns!

Otherwise, have some food-related nerdery. I picked up a few second-hand books about gathering wild food and/or identifying wild plants and mushrooms, which is what fed (hah) into this.

 

 

 

I can no longer remember where the phrase 'unholy wildling charms' originated, which might be a good thing. Ruffnut has already had her first dirty song in this fic, and indeed in the first film her "You're crazy... I like it" to Hiccup is only a sign of her occasionally man-crazy behaviour to come! She is shamelessly interested in the opposite sex (and Heather), and I love her for it. Despite the absolute silliness of the term, there is a slightly darker edge, in terms of the hypersexualisation of the 'other' which is going on here. Between the comments about "lying with demons" at the meeting, there is a sense of wildlings being both dehumanised and sexualised, an unfortunately human trait.

 

 

 

The end part of this chapter was set up to contrast the lessening/breaking up of the group who are anti-dragons and the strengthening of the pro-dragon group. Berk is a strong, established village, no matter what has happened, so while there is some fracturing at the edges it has only led to a few individuals breaking off, and largely Berk has remained intact.

I have been asked during this fic why some people didn't leave, if they didn't like the dragons and it was becoming clear that the pro-dragon side had 'won'. I think that some of it is a sort of righteous anger; those who are anti-dragon believe that they are in the right, even if from an external point of view, they are not. It's a case of partially believing that the dragons really are bad and everyone else is just being taken in. So of those who are against them, at least some of them believe that if people just _see_ how bad/destructive/wild the dragons really are, then Berk will drive the dragons back away again. There's also probably a certain amount of 'my village'/'my place' about it, feeling that the dragons are _invading_ their space.  So while some people choose a peaceful exit over remaining to argue, some people are refusing to give up where they live.

With the baby dragons, I've talked before about going with dragons growing more slowly. So the Gronckles will maybe take six or seven years to reach a ridable size, and bigger dragons would take longer.

Writing down the names of the dragons and noting them as Meatlug's offspring... it gave me strange images of pedigree dragons, but who knows?! They'd be slower to breed than cats or dogs, but you could probably get there eventually, at least with the smaller dragons like Terrible Terrors or Night Terrors!


End file.
